Part 21 (2/2)

”I cannot agree with you,” Wolfenden said; ”for me it is most inopportune. I need scarcely say that I have not abandoned my desire to make your niece my wife.”

”I should have thought,” Mr. Sabin said, with a fine note of satire in his tone, ”that you would have put far away from you all idea of any connection with such suspicious personages.”

”I have never had,” Wolfenden said calmly, ”any suspicion at all concerning your niece.”

”She would be, I am sure, much flattered,” Mr. Sabin declared. ”At the same time I can scarcely see on what grounds you continue to hope for an impossibility. My niece's refusal seemed to me explicit enough, especially when coupled with my own positive prohibition.”

”Your niece,” Wolfenden said, ”is doubtless of age. I should not trouble about your consent if I could gain hers, and I may as well tell you at once, that I by no means despair of doing so.”

Mr. Sabin bit his lip, and his dark eyes flashed out with a sudden fire.

”I should be glad to know, sir,” he said, ”on what grounds you consider my voice in the affair to be ineffective?”

”Partly,” Wolfenden answered, ”for the reason which I have already given you--because your niece is of age; and partly also because you persist in giving me no definite reason for your refusal.”

”I have told you distinctly,” Mr. Sabin said, ”that my niece is betrothed and will be married within six months.”

”To whom? where is he? why is he not here? Your niece wears no engagement ring. I will answer for it, that if she is as you say betrothed, it is not of her own free will.”

”You talk,” Mr. Sabin said with dangerous calm, ”like a fool. It is not customary amongst the cla.s.s to which my niece belongs to wear always an engagement ring. As for her affections, she has had, I am glad to say, a sufficient self-control to keep them to herself. Your presumption is simply the result of your entire ignorance. I appeal to you for the last time, Lord Wolfenden, to behave like a man of common sense, and abandon hopes which can only end in disappointment.”

”I have no intention of doing anything of the sort,” Wolfenden said doggedly; ”we Englishmen are a pig-headed race, as you were once polite enough to observe. Your niece is the only woman whom I have wished to marry, and I shall marry her, if I can.”

”I shall make it my especial concern,” Mr. Sabin said firmly, ”to see that all intercourse between you ends at once.”

Wolfenden rose to his feet.

”It is obviously useless,” he said, ”to continue this conversation. I have told you my intentions. I shall pursue them to the best of my ability. Good-morning.”

Mr. Sabin held out his hand.

”I have just a word more to say to you,” he declared. ”It is about your father.”

”I do not desire to discuss my father, or any other matter with you,” Wolfenden said quietly. ”As to my father's work, I am determined to solve the mystery connected with it once and for all. I have wired for Mr. C. to come down, and, if necessary, take possession of the papers. You can get what information you require from him yourself.”

Mr. Sabin rose up slowly; his long, white fingers were clasped around the head of that curious stick of his. There was a peculiar glint in his eyes, and his cheeks were pale with pa.s.sion.

”I am very much obliged to you for telling me that,” he said; ”it is valuable information for me. I will certainly apply to Mr. C.”

He had been drawing nearer and nearer to Wolfenden. Suddenly he stopped, and, with a swift movement, raised the stick on which he had been leaning, over his head. It whirled round in a semi-circle. Wolfenden, fascinated by that line of gleaming green light, hesitated for a moment, then he sprang backwards, but he was too late. The head of the stick came down on his head, his upraised arm did little to break the force of the blow. He sank to the ground with a smothered groan.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

THE SECRET OF MR. SABIN'S NIECE.

At the sound of his cry, Helene, who had been crossing the hall, threw open the door just as Mr. Sabin's fingers were upon the key. Seeing that he was powerless to keep from her the knowledge of what had happened, he did not oppose her entrance. She glided into the centre of the room with a stifled cry of terror. Together, she and Mr. Sabin bent over Wolfenden's motionless figure. Mr. Sabin unfastened the waistcoat and felt his heart. She did not speak until he had held his hand there for several seconds, then she asked a question.

”Have you killed him?”

Mr. Sabin shook his head and smiled gently.

”Too tough a skull by far,” he said. ”Can you get a basin and a towel without any one seeing you?”

She nodded, and fetched them from her own room. The water was fresh and cold, and the towel was of fine linen daintily hemmed, and fragrant with the perfume of violets. Yet neither of these things, nor the soft warmth of her breathing upon his cheek, seemed to revive him in the least. He lay quite still in the same heavy stupor. Mr. Sabin stood upright and looked at him thoughtfully. His face had grown almost haggard.

”We had better send for a doctor,” she whispered fiercely. ”I shall fetch one myself if you do not!”

Mr. Sabin gently dissented.

”I know quite as much as any doctor,” he said; ”the man is not dead, or dying, or likely to die. I wonder if we could move him on to that sofa!”

Together they managed it somehow. Mr. Sabin, in the course of his movements to and fro about the room, was attracted by the sight of the dogcart still waiting outside. He frowned, and stood for a moment looking thoughtfully at it. Then he went outside.

”Are you waiting for Lord Wolfenden?” he asked the groom.

The man looked up in surprise.

”Yes, sir. I set him down here nearly an hour ago. I had no orders to go home.”

”Lord Wolfenden has evidently forgotten all about you,” Mr. Sabin said. ”He left by the back way for the golf course, and I am going to join him there directly. He is not coming back here at all. You had better go home, I should think.”

The man touched his hat.

”Very good, sir.”

There was a little trampling up of the gravel, and Wolfenden's dogcart rapidly disappeared in the distance. Mr. Sabin, with set face and a hard glitter in his eyes went back into the morning room. Helene was still on her knees by Wolfenden's prostrate figure when he entered. She spoke to him without looking up.

”He is a little better, I think; he opened his eyes just now.”

”He is not seriously hurt,” Mr. Sabin said; ”there may be some slight concussion, nothing more. The question is, first, what to do with him, and secondly, how to make the best use of the time which must elapse before he will be well enough to go home.”

She looked at him now in horror. He was always like this, unappalled by anything which might happen, eager only to turn every trick of fortune to his own ends. Surely his nerves were of steel and his heart of iron.

”I think,” she said, ”that I should first make sure that he is likely to recover at all.”

Mr. Sabin answered mechanically, his thoughts seemed far away.

”His recovery is a thing already a.s.sured,” he said. ”His skull was too hard to crack; he will be laid up for an hour or two. What I have to decide is how to use that hour or two to the best possible advantage.”

She looked away from him and shuddered. This pa.s.sionate absorption of all his energies into one channel had made a fiend of the man. Her slowly growing purpose took to itself root and branch, as she knelt by the side of the young Englishman, who only a few moments ago had seemed the very embodiment of all manly vigour.

Mr. Sabin stood up. He had arrived at a determination.

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