A girl and her ways

HE sat back in his easy chair, pipe in mouth, and newspaper on his knee. The lashing wind and rain outside added to his sense of comfort. He was unassailable, he knew, from all unpleasant elements. A bright wood fire burned on the open hearth. His room was lined with books, for he was a book lover. Everything around him was for use and not for ornament. Some oil portraits hung on the walls, members of the Holt family; but there was no china, no flowers, and no signs of a woman's hand and taste in his room.

Thorold Holt was now nearer forty than thirty. He had a lean, sinewy frame, his close-cropped dark head was already streaked with grey, and at times there was a weary look about his grey eyes which belied his habitual cheeriness. People who knew him best said that his sense of humour was natural, but his cheeriness a manufactured article. He had had a hard life, and found it difficult to believe that at last his hard times were over.

An interruption came now to his solitude.

The door opened, and his one manservant appeared.

"Two ladies to see you, sir. I have shown them into the drawing-room."

"Oh these females!" muttered Thorold with real annoyance. "Even rain doesn't keep them indoors. A begging appeal, I suppose."

He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and rose discontentedly from his seat. He went out into a square hall, tiled in black and white stone underfoot, and crossed it, entering into a very stiff and stately-looking drawing-room, with early Victorian relics, besides some really good bits of antique furniture. Two women sat awaiting him. One he recognized as his rector's wife. He wondered she had not given her name, but he had only met her once before. She addressed him promptly.

"I must apologize for troubling you, but I think you will have to see this good woman, Miss Ward by name. She arrived yesterday evening from London, and as she came to the Rectory for advice, we gave her a bed, and after hearing her story and sifting it well, my husband and I think it only right to bring her straight to you."

Thorold stared at the two women in complete bewilderment.

"But who in the world is it?" he asked. "It isn't a long lost wife, for I have never married, and I am morally certain that I have never set eyes on Miss Ward before!"

"Miss Ward was not aware of your late cousin's death, or that you were in possession of his property," said Mrs. Gould, the rector's wife.

"Oh, then her business was with him?" queried Thorold.

Miss Ward for the first time looked up and spoke. She was a plain-featured woman dressed in black, and spoke with a slight American accent.

"The death of Mr. Charles Holt has floored me," she said; "I was counting on his help. God knows, it's badly needed."

"Well, if it is his private affair, I would rather discuss it with you privately. Come this way. Thank you, Mrs. Gould, for bringing her up. We will not keep you."

He knew he was treating his rector's wife badly; but he had already suffered from her insatiable thirst for managing every person she came across. And he did not intend that she should point out to him now wherein his duty lay.

Mrs. Gould rose from her seat with great annoyance.

"I shall be glad to know in good time if you are going to put her up here to-night; and perhaps you will be able to send down to the Rectory for her luggage. We only took her in out of kindness last night. The village inn is not a desirable place for a single woman."

"It is all such a mystery to me that I can make no promises or plans at present," said Thorold.

And then he marched the stranger into his comfortable smoking-room, and drew up a chair to the fire for her.

"Now," he said, "tell me in as few words as you can, who you are, and what your business is."

"I was a maid of Mrs. Brendon's about eleven years ago, and then I became her companion and nursed her when she died, and I loved her. She was my best friend on earth, and I promised her to stick to her child, and so I have, but all along since I came across the letter, Mr. Charles Holt has been my goal and mainstay. And it has fairly knocked me over to know he is dead and buried!"

"Will you tell me, please, who Mrs. Brendon was and what connection she was of my cousin?"

"I reckon she was a cousin like yourself; and a little more too, judging from this letter, which I'd best show you."

She produced a letter from her pocket which she handed to Thorold, and he stood leaning his back against the mantelpiece, whilst he read it.

"MY DEAR LENA,—

"I have heard that you and your little one have made your home in Capri. Well, I am glad to think of you in that sweet setting and perhaps after the stormy turbulence of your young life, you may find your widowhood a period of peace and rest. I should not think you were troubled with superfluous cash, so will you let me defray the cost of my god-daughter's education? I should like to see her one day. I am a lonely man with few kith or kin, as you know, and I want to make her acquaintance. Send her over to me if you ever want to get rid of her. If she is anything like the wild slip of girl her mother was, she will enliven my solitude, and at my death she will benefit.

"Your never-forgetting cousin,

"CHARLES HOLT."

Thorold read this through more than once. Then he looked up.

"Did Mrs. Brendon answer this letter?"

"No, she told me she was not going to part with her child; and if she responded to Mr. Holt's advances, he would expect her to marry him, and that she could never do."

"Then, having made her choice, and keeping her child, why do you come to me and produce this letter? Mr. Holt left his money elsewhere. The child has lost her chance."

The woman looked at him miserably.

"What can I do?" she asked. "I haven't the money to keep her. She's too young to keep herself. She's just a child. And I came to see Mr. Charles Holt. I did not know he was dead."

"Surely Mrs. Brendon left some money?"

"She had a pension only, which stopped at her death. Colonel Brendon saved nothing. Mrs. Brendon and I used to help out with fine sewing. The nuns at the convent used to give us some to do."

Thorold shrugged his shoulders.

"I am not a rich man. I can't spare a separate income for this young girl. Why should I? She is no relation of mine."

"A cousin's cousin," the stranger murmured. "If she had come over in Mr. Holt's lifetime, she would have been his heiress."