PAGE 21
Trent’s Trust
by
“I should have been glad to testify to the kindness of your brother, at any risk,” returned Randolph stoutly. “You have heard that the portmanteau was stolen from me, but the amount of money it contained has been placed in Mr. Dingwall’s hands for disposal.”
“Its contents were known, and all that’s been settled,” returned Sir William, rising. “But,” he continued, with his forced laugh, which to Randolph’s fancy masked a certain threatening significance, “I say, it would have been a beastly business, don’t you know, if you HAD been called upon to produce it again–ha, ha!–eh?”
Returning to the dining room, Randolph found Miss Avondale alone on a corner of the sofa. She swept her skirts aside as he approached, as an invitation for him to sit beside her. Still sore from his experience, he accepted only in the hope that she was about to confide to him her opinion of this strange story. But, to his chagrin, she looked at him over her fan with a mischievous tolerance. “You seemed more interested in the cousin than the brother of your patron.”
Once Randolph might have been flattered at this. But her speech seemed to him only an echo of the general heartlessness. “I found Miss Eversleigh very sympathetic over the fate of the unfortunate man, whom nobody else here seems to care for,” said Randolph coldly.
“Yes,” returned Miss Avondale composedly; “I believe she was a great friend of Captain Dornton when she was quite a child, and I don’t think she can expect much from Sir William, who is very different from his brother. In fact, she was one of the relatives who came over here in quest of the captain, when it was believed he was living and the heir. He was quite a patron of hers.”
“But was he not also one of yours?” said Randolph bluntly.
“I think I told you I was the friend of the boy and of poor Paquita, the boy’s mother,” said Miss Avondale quietly. “I never saw Captain Dornton but twice.”
Randolph noticed that she had not said “wife,” although in her previous confidences she had so described the mother. But, as Dingwall had said, why should she have exposed the boy’s illegitimacy to a comparative stranger; and if she herself had been deceived about it, why should he expect her to tell him? And yet–he was not satisfied.
He was startled by a little laugh. “Well, I declare, you look as if you resented the fact that your benefactor had turned out to be a baronet–just as in some novel–and that you have rendered a service to the English aristocracy. If you are thinking of poor Bobby,” she continued, without the slightest show of self-consciousness, “Sir William will provide for him, and thinks of taking him to England to restore his health. Now”–with her smiling, tolerant superiority–“you must go and talk to Miss Eversleigh. I see her looking this way, and I don’t think she half likes me as it is.”
Randolph, who, however, also saw that Sir William was lounging toward them, here rose formally, as if permitting the latter to take the vacated seat. This partly imposed on him the necessity of seeking Miss Eversleigh, who, having withdrawn to the other end of the room, was turning over the leaves of an album. As Randolph joined her, she said, without looking up, “Is Miss Avondale a friend of yours?”
The question was so pertinent to his reflections at the moment that he answered impulsively, “I really don’t know.”
“Yes, that’s the answer, I think, most of her acquaintances would give, if they were asked the same question and replied honestly,” said the young girl, as if musing.
“Even Sir William?” suggested Randolph, half smiling, yet wondering at her unlooked-for serious shrewdness as he glanced toward the sofa.
“Yes; but HE wouldn’t care. You see, there would be a pair of them.” She stopped with a slight blush, as if she had gone too far, but corrected herself in her former youthful frankness: “You don’t mind my saying what I did of her? You’re not such a PARTICULAR friend?”