“Certainly not, old chap,” was my answer. “If left alone she’ll want some one to advise her and to look after her interests.”
“The scoundrelly lawyer chaps will do that,” he snapped, with a strange hardness in his voice, as though he entertained no love for his solicitors. “No, I want you to see that no man marries her for her money—you understand? Dozens of fellows are after her at this moment, I know, but I’d rather see her dead than she should marry one of them. She must marry for love—love, you hear? Promise me, Gilbert, that that you’ll look after her, won’t you?”
Still holding his hand, I promised.
That was the last word he uttered. His pale lips twitched again, but no sound came from them. His glassy eyes were fixed upon me with a stony, terrible stare, as though he were endeavouring to tell me something.
Perhaps he was revealing to me the great secret—the secret of how he had solved the mystery of fortune and become worth over a million sterling—perhaps he was speaking of Mab. Which we knew not. His tongue refused to articulate, the silence of death was upon him.
Thus he passed away; and thus did I find myself bound to a promise which I intended to fulfil, even though he had not revealed to us his secret, as we confidently expected. We believed that, knowing himself to be dying, he had summoned us there to impart that knowledge which would render us both rich beyond the dreams of avarice. But in this we had been most bitterly disappointed. For five years, I confess, we had waited, expecting that he would some day share some of his wealth with us in return for those services we had rendered him in the past. Yet now it seemed he had coolly disregarded his indebtedness to us, and at the same time imposed upon me a duty by no means easy—the guardianship of his only daughter Mabel.