“Then if such be your decision you must take the consequences. You are an unworthy son.”
“In the matter of my marriage I shall follow my own inclinations entirely,” the young man said calmly.
“Very well,” the Baronet answered, and making a sign to his solicitor, Harrison, commanded his son to leave the room.
At first George demurred; but in accordance with the suggestion of the doctors that the wishes of their patient should be respected at that crisis-time, he went out, and passing downstairs to the library threw himself back in one of the roomy leather chairs.
Yes, he loved Liane. With her vivacious half-English, half-French mannerisms, her sweet musical accent, her dark beauty and grey trusting eyes, she was unlike any other woman he had ever beheld. They had met by chance on Mortimer Common a few months before. One morning, while riding towards Ufton, he had found her at the roadside endeavouring to re-adjust her cycle, which had met with a slight accident. His proffered services were gratefully accepted, and from that moment their friendship had ripened into passionate and devoted love. Almost daily they took long walks and rides together, but so secret had been their meetings that until half-an-hour ago he had no idea that his father was aware of the truth. He had purposely kept the matter from Sir John because of his severe illness, yet someone, whom he knew not, must have watched him and gone to the Baronet with some foul libellous story.
As he lay back in the chair, his gaitered legs crossed, his sun-browned hands clasped behind his head, gazing up to the old panelled ceiling, he reflected that in a few hours the Court would no longer be his home. His elder brother, Major Stratfield, who for the past five years had been in India with his regiment, the East Surrey, had been telegraphed for, and in a few weeks would arrive and become Sir John Stratfield, while he, dogged by the misfortune attendant on being a younger son, would go forth from the old place with an income the extent of which he could not know until after the will had been read.
George’s life had certainly not been a happy one. Since his mother’s death a few months after his birth, his father had become a hard man, irritable and misanthropic. He kept no company, begrudged every penny his son cost him at college, and appeared to take a delight in obtaining the ill-will of all his neighbours. He knew that scarcely a person in the parish would regret his decease, and used frequently to comment with self-satisfaction upon the unenviable reputation he had gained. This was merely eccentricity, people said; but for George it was decidedly unpleasant, for while he was welcomed in every house, his father was never invited. Sometimes this fact impressed itself forcibly on the old man’s mind, but on such occasions he would only laugh contemptuously, saying:
“Ah, the Stratfields of Stratfield can afford to treat with contempt these mushroom merchants without breeding, and without pedigree.”
At whatever George had achieved the baronet had never shown the slightest sign of satisfaction. His career at Balliol had been brilliant, he had eaten his dinners at Lincoln’s Inn and been duly called to the Bar, but all to no purpose, for almost as soon as he had been “called,” his father, strangely enough, refused to grant him any further allowance unless he gave up his chambers and returned to live at Stratfield. This he had been forced to do, although much against his inclination, for he preferred his friends of the Common Room to the society of his eccentric parent. However, it had after all turned out for the best, he reflected, because a month after he had come back he had met the grey-eyed girl whose beauty held him entranced, and whom he intended to ask to become his wife. From the very first it had been arranged between them that they should keep their acquaintance secret, only Nelly Bridson being aware of it, and it was she who met George with notes from Liane when, on rare occasions, the latter was unable to keep her appointments. He had found both girls extremely pleasant companions, and through the sunny months the bright, halcyon days had passed happily.
In obedience to Liane’s wish he had refrained from calling upon Captain Brooker. Truth to tell, the refined, ingenuous girl, with her French chic and charming manner, was ashamed of their shabby home, of her father’s frayed but well-cut clothes, of the distinct evidences of their poverty, and feared lest her lover should discover the secret of her father’s rather ignominious past. She had told him that the Captain was a half-pay officer, and that her mother had been French; but she had been careful never to refer to the polyglot society in which they had moved on the Continent, nor to the fact that she was daughter of a man well-known in all the gaming establishments in Europe. All that was of the past, she had assured herself. If George knew the truth, then certainly he would forsake her. And she loved him no less than he adored her. Hence her lover had been puzzled not a little by her steadfast refusal to tell him anything definite regarding her earlier life, and the equal reticence of her foster sister. Of course, he could not fail to recognise behind this veil of mystery some family secret, yet in his buoyant frame of mind, happy in his new-found love, it troubled him but little. Liane, his enchantress, loved him; that was sufficient.