Trevlyn Hold Part 94

"Yes, perhaps it may be better," she answered; "but I dare not tell him.

Will you undertake it?"

He nodded, and began to wonder what excuse he could invent for seeking a private conference with the newly-returned Squire. But while he plotted and planned, Maude rendered it unnecessary.

By a sense of the fitness of things, the state-rooms at the Hold, generally kept for visitors, were a.s.signed by Miss Diana to her brother.

He was shown to them, and was in the act of gazing from the window at the well-remembered features of the old domain when there stole in upon him one, white and tearless, but with a terrified imploring despair in her countenance.

"Maude, my child, what is it? I like your face, my dear, and must have you henceforth for my very own child!"

"Not me, Uncle Rupert, never mind me," she said, the kindly tones telling upon her breaking heart and bringing forth a gush of tears. "If you will only love Rupert!--only get Mr. Chattaway to forgive him!"

"But he may be dead, child."

"Uncle Rupert, if he were not dead--if you found him now, to-day," she reiterated--"would _you_ deliver him up to justice? Oh, don't blame him; don't visit it upon him! It was the Trevlyn temper, and Mr. Chattaway should not have provoked it by horsewhipping him."

"_I_ blame him! _I_ deliver a Trevlyn up to justice!" echoed Squire Trevlyn, with a threatening touch of the Trevlyn temper at that very moment. "What are you saying, child? If Rupert is in life he shall have his wrongs righted from henceforth. The cost of a burnt rick? The ricks were mine, not Chattaway's. Rupert Trevlyn is my heir, and he shall so be recognised and received."

She sank down before him crying softly with the relief his words brought her. Squire Trevlyn placed his hand on her pretty hair, caressingly.

"Don't grieve so, child; he may not be dead. I'll find him if he is to be found. The police shall know they have a Squire Trevlyn amongst them again."

"Uncle Rupert, he is very near; lying in concealment--ill--almost dying.

We have not dared to betray it, and the secret is nearly killing us."

He listened in amazement, and questioned her until he gathered the outlines of the case. "Who has known of this, do you say?"

"My aunt Edith, and I, and the doctor; and--and--George Ryle."

The consciousness with which the last name was brought out, the sudden blush, whispered a tale to keen Squire Trevlyn.

"Halloa, Miss Maude! I read a secret. _That_ will not do, you know. I cannot spare you from the Hold for all the George Ryles in the world.

You must be its mistress."

"My aunt Diana will be that," murmured Maude.

"That she never shall be whilst I am master," was the emphatic rejoinder. "If Diana could look quietly on and see her father deceived, help to deceive him; see Chattaway usurp the Hold to the exclusion of Joe's son, and join in the wickedness, she has forfeited all claim to it: she shall neither reign nor reside in it. No, my little Maude, you must live with me, as mistress of Trevlyn Hold."

Maude's tears were flowing in silence. She kept her head down.

"What is George Ryle to you?" somewhat sternly asked Squire Trevlyn. "Do you love him?"

"I had no one else to love: they were not kind to me--except my aunt Edith," she murmured.

He sat lost in thought. "Is he a good man, Maude? Upright, honourable, just?"

"That, and more," she whispered.

"And I suppose you love him? Would it quite break your heart were I to issue my edict that you should never have him; to say you must turn him over to Octave Chattaway?"

It was only a jest. Maude took it differently, and lifted her glowing face. "But he does not like Octave! It is Octave who likes----"

She had spoken impulsively, and now that recollection came to her she hesitated. Squire Trevlyn, undignified as it was, broke into a subdued whistle.

"I see, young lady. And so, Mr. George has had the good taste to like some one better than Octave. Well, perhaps I should do so, in his place."

"But about Rupert?" she pleaded.

"Ah, about Rupert. I must go to him at once. Mark Canham stared as I came through the gate just now, as one scared out of his wits. He must have been puzzled by the likeness."

Squire Trevlyn went down to the hall, and was putting on his hat when they came flocking around, asking whether he was going out, offering to accompany him, Diana requesting him to wait whilst she put on her bonnet. But he waved them off: he preferred to stroll out alone, he said; he might look in and have a talk with some of his father's old dependants--if any were left.

George Ryle was standing outside, deliberating as to how he should convey the communication, little thinking it had already been done.

Squire Trevlyn came up, and pa.s.sed an arm within his.

"I am going to the lodge," he remarked. "You may know whom I want to see there."

"You have heard, then!" exclaimed George.

"Yes. From Maude. By-the-by, Mr. George, what secret understanding is there between you and that young lady?"

George looked surprised; but he was not one to lose his equanimity. "It is no longer a secret, sir. I have confided it to Miss Diana. If Mr.

Chattaway will grant me the lease of a certain farm, I shall speak to him."

"Mr. Chattaway! The farms don't belong to him now, but to me."

George laughed. "Yes, I forgot. I must come to you for it, sir. I want the Upland."

"And you would like to take Maude with it?"

"Oh, yes! I must take her with it."

"Softly, sir. Maude belongs to me, just as the farms do: and I can tell you for your consolation, and you must make the best of it, that I cannot spare her from the Hold. There; that's enough. I have not come home to have my will disputed: I am a true Trevlyn."

A somewhat uncomfortable silence ensued, and lasted until they reached the lodge. Squire Trevlyn entered without ceremony. Old Mark, who was sitting before the hearth apparently in deep thought, turned his head, saw who was coming in, rose as quickly as his rheumatism allowed him, and stared as if he saw an apparition.

"Do you know me, Mark?"

"To my dazed eyes it looks like the Squire," was Mark's answer, slowly shaking his head, as one in perplexity. "But I know it cannot be. I stood at these gates as he was carried out to his last home in Barbrook churchyard. The Squire was older, too."

"The Squire left a son, Mark."

"Sir--sir!" burst forth the old man, after a pause, as the light flashed upon him. "Sir--sir! You surely are never the young heir, Mr. Rupert, we have all mourned as dead?"

"Do you remember the young heir's features, Mark?"

"Ay, I have never forgot them, sir."

"Then look at mine."