because she’d seen a ghost. She, Topsey, had seen the ghost too, and she described it. Mr. Duck’s horror was intense when he found the apparition the child described was the exact counterpart of the firm’s drowned client. It was coming away from the house that he met Dr. Birnie, and sent him in to see what was the matter with the housekeeper. From the doctor he learned the particulars of the case. Mrs. Turvey declared she had seen the ghost of her master, and the child corroborated her.
It couldn’t be Gurth Egerton in flesh and blood, because he would have come in and spoken to them. He would have said, ‘Here I am,’ or made some observation.
But this ghost said nothing, and when Topsey, who had seized her aunt, and hidden her face, looked up, the door was shut and the ghost was gone.
Mrs. Turvey came to herself to find Topsey sobbing beside her and white with terror. They got downstairs the best way they could, and locked themselves in, and had the gas on full all night.
The next morning Mrs. Turvey was very ill, and Dr. Birnie had attended her ever since.
Jabez, who could keep very little to himself, had told this ghost story, with sundry reservations, to his sister, and she, finding the draft of a tender declaration in the pocket of a pair of trousers he had left out to be brushed, immediately put two and two together, like the clever woman that she was, and determined to tackle her brother at once.
Miss Georgina Duck was a strong-minded, hard-featured damsel, who had passed sweet seventeen some thirty years ago. She was mistress of a house without being plagued with a husband. She managed her brother’s home, and her word was law. She ruled him, and she ruled the lodgers in the first floor, and she ruled the charwoman who came in to help occasionally, and she ruled the butcher and the baker and the milkman, and everybody in the neighbourhood who came within the circle of her magic influence.
She even ruled the cats. No cats came into her garden, or if by chance they did cross it en route for the gardens beyond, it was always in fear and trembling. Before the eye of Georgina Duck the most daring Tom would quail, and it was wonderful how quickly the whole of the neighbouring feline colony learned to shun a conflict with Miss Duck.
Now this was hardly the woman quietly to resign her sceptre after a long despotic reign just because her elderly idiot of a brother had taken a fancy to an old woman’s legacy.
‘A pretty thing, indeed,’ said Miss Duck to her bosom friend, Miss Jackson, from over the road, ‘for him to go making a fool of himself at his age! The house wouldn’t hold her and me long. I suppose I should be expected to turn out. Not me!’
The idea of Miss Duck turning out so shocked Miss Jackson that she fell upon her friend’s neck and wept.
Miss Jackson always wept. Tears with her supplied the place of speech.
‘Don’t be a fool, ‘Lizer,’ said Miss Duck, harshly. ‘There’s nothing to cry about. He hasn’t done it yet. And he isn’t going to!’’
If Mr. Duck had been present he would have accepted his fate there and then, and resigned Mrs. Turvey without a struggle. Fortunately, he still believed that he could evade the watchful guardianship of Georgina, and did not allow his little plans to be disconcerted.
CHAPTER VI. AN OFFER OF MARRIAGE.
At the lodge-gates of an old-fashioned country mansion, which stands in a well-wooded park shut in among the Surrey hills, a young girl was waiting one winter night. Every now and then she would turn and glance towards the house, as though she expected some one to come from it.
Twice she fancied she heard a footstep and stepped out into the shadow of the roadway, and twice she found her faney had deceived her.
But the third time it was no fancy. There was a well-known step upon the broad gravel path, and in the dim light she could see the figure of a man coming rapidly towards her. She gave a nervous glance towards the lodge-window, then darted out into the roadway, and, walking in the shadow of the hedge that skirted the park, reached a spot where the bend of the road would hide her from the view of any one looking out of the lodge-gates.
The man, walking rapidly, soon caught her up.
She ran to him, and, looking up into his face, questioned him eagerly with her eyes.
He shook his head sorrowfully.
‘Failure, Bess,’ he said. ‘I must leave this place to-night.’
The girl gave a little cry, and, taking the man’s arm, clung closely to him.
‘Yes, Bess; the old man’s as hard as iron. I flung myself on his mercy. I told him all. He heard what I had to say, and then turned me out like a dog. Swore I wanted to ruin him. The old miser!’
‘Hush, George—he is your father.’
‘He was, you mean. We’ve parted for ever. He says I’m no son of his. So be it. He’s no father of mine. A paltry thousand would have put me straight.’
‘Can nothing be done, George?’
‘Nothing, my girl. I’m what they call dead broke. I must get up to town, and trust to luck. I’m young and strong, and if I can’t pay my debts, at any rate I can earn bread-and-cheese.’
The girl let him run on, but his flippant manner distressed her. You could see that in her face. The dark eyes were filled with tears, and the red lips trembled. She was a village beauty—a handsome brunette—this lodge-keeper’s daughter, and many a village swain had laid his heart at her feet, but she had laughed their love away, and kept her heart for one who was far above her. The man by her side was her master’s son, young George Heritage, heir to the house and lands—‘the young squire’ they called him in the village, but Bess only called him ‘George.’
Bess Marks was no ordinary rustic beauty, or I question very much if she would have won George Heritage’s heart. She was a strong-minded, pure-hearted, clever girl—a girl who exercised a strange fascination over the young squire.
Their sweethearting was a profound secret from every one. There was enough romance in it to redeem it from vulgarity, and it was a perfectly serious affair.
No thought of harm had ever entered the young man’s breast. He had accepted the fact that he had fallen in love with a lodge-keeper’s daughter as he accepted the fact that he had got heavily into debt. He couldn’t help it. That was his answer to himself when he and his conscience had a quiet quarter of an hour together.
Some day he supposed he would have to pay his debts; some day he supposed he would marry Bess. ‘Some day’ was a movable feast, and so George didn’t worry himself about it.
But to-night a crisis had come. To-night he had to begin a new life. He was no longer Squire Heritage’s heir.
George had not exaggerated the nature of his interview with his father. The old squire was the last man in the world who should have been George’s father.
He was as careful of money as his son was prodigal. His notions of what a young man of three-and-twenty ought to be were founded upon what he himself had been at that age—a steady young fellow, contented to ride about his father’s estate, talk with the old men, and spend his days about the land and his evenings in the library. He was matter of fact, stern, and uncompromising. He came of Puritan stock, and he had notions of morality which were scandalized by the fashionable follies of to-day.
He was bitterly disappointed in his son, in whom he had hoped to find a companion. When Mrs. Heritage died the lad was fifteen and at school, and he saw but little of his father. In due course he went to Oxford, and there he developed his ‘fast’ tendencies. He got into a fast set, went the pace, and ran heavily into debt.
The