Part 14 (1/2)

”And Rankin was interested, as a young lady he was acting for had just come into a pot of money and a fine place down in Kent, and he had heard that she used to be employed by you. Ah, ha!” Bloomberg laughed. ”You oughtn't to have let her slip away, old man. She was as pretty as a peach, and now with some hundreds of thousands she will be worth while, eh?”

”I suppose so,” Slotman said, apparently indifferently. ”And did you hear the name of the place she had come into?”

”I did. Something--Den--all places in Kent are something or other--Den.

Oh, Starden! That's it! Well, I must go. But tell me, what's your opinion about those Calbary Reef Preferentials?”

Ten minutes later Slotman was alone, frowning at thought. If it were true, then indeed the luck had been against him. Even without money he had been willing, more than willing to marry Joan, in spite of the past, of which he knew nothing, but suspected much. Yes, he would have married her.

”She got hold of me,” he muttered, ”and I can't leave off thinking of her, and now she is an heiress, and Heaven knows I want money. If I had a chance, if--” He paused.

For a long while Mr. Philip Slotman sat in deep thought. About Joan Meredyth there was a mystery, and it was a mystery that might be well worth solving.

”I'll hunt it out,” he muttered. ”I'll have to work back. Let me see, there was that old General--General--?”

He frowned, Ah! he had it now, for his memory was a good one.

”General Bartholomew! That was the name,” Slotman muttered. ”And that is where I commence my hunt!”

CHAPTER XV

”TO THE MANNER BORN”

Starden Hall was one of those half-timbered houses in the possession of which Kent and Suss.e.x are rich. It was no great mansion, but a comfortable, rambling old house, that had been built many a generation ago, and had been added to as occasion required by thoughtful owners, who had always borne in mind the architecture and the atmosphere of the original, and so to-day it covered a vast quant.i.ty of ground, being but one storey high, and about it spread flower gardens and n.o.ble park-land that were delights to the eye.

And this place was hers. It belonged to her, the girl who a few short weeks ago had been earning three pounds a week in a City office, and whose nightmare had been worklessness and starvation.

Helen Everard watched the girl closely. ”To the manner born,” she thought. And yet there was that about Joan that she would have altered, a coldness, an aloofness. Too often the beautiful mouth was set and hard, never cruel, yet scornful. Too often those l.u.s.trous eyes looked coldly out on to a world that was surely smiling on her now.

”There's something--” the elder woman thought, for she was a clever and capable woman--a woman who could see under the surface of things, a woman who had loved and suffered, and had risen triumphant over misfortunes, which had been so many and so dire that they might have crushed a less valiant spirit.

General Bartholomew had explained briefly:

”The child is alone in the world. There is something I don't quite understand, Helen. It is about a marriage--” The old gentleman paused.

”Look here, I'll tell you. I had a letter from Lady Linden, an old friend, and she begged me to find Joan and bring her and her young husband together again.”

”Then she is married?”

”No, that is, I--I don't know. 'Pon my soul, I don't know--can't make head or tail of it! She says she isn't, and, by George! she isn't a girl who would lie; but if she isn't--well, I'm beaten, Helen. I can't make it out. At any rate, I did bring her and the lad, and a fine lad he is too, George Alston's son, together. And he left the house without seeing me, and afterwards the girl told me that he was practically a stranger to her, and that there had never been any marriage at all. At the same time she asked me not to write to Lady Linden, and she said that it was no business of hers, which was true, come to that. And so--so now she's come into this money, and she is utterly alone in the world, and wants to go to Starden to live--why, my dear--”

”I see,” Helen said. ”I shall be glad to go there for a time you know; it's Alfred's country.”

”I remembered that.”

”John Everard is living at Buddesby with his sister Constance. They are two of the dearest people--the children, you know, of Alfred's brother Matthew.”

”Yes--yes, to be sure,” said the old gentleman, who was not in the slightest degree interested.

”And they will be nice for your Joan Meredyth to know,” said Mrs.