"Here it is; it is all stamped and in due form, and needs only your signature and that of two witnesses."

Mr. Brander rang the bell.

"John, call Gardener in. I want you both to witness my signature." The coachman came in.

"Glad to see you again, Mr. Cuthbert," he said, touching an imaginary hat.

"I am glad to see you, Gardener. I knew you were still here."

All was ready for the signature. While waiting for the men's entry Cuthbert had said--

"I would rather you did not read this deed until you have signed it, Mr.

Brander. I know it is a most unbusiness-like thing for you to do, but I think you may feel sure you can trust me."

"I have no intention of reading it," the lawyer said. "Whatever the conditions of that paper I am ready to comply with them."

After the signatures had been affixed, and the witnesses had retired, Cuthbert said--

"Now, Mr. Brander, you are at liberty to read the deed. I think you will find its provisions satisfactory."

Mr. Brander, with a slight shrug of his shoulders that signified that he was indifferent as to the details of the arrangement, took the paper and began to run his eyes carelessly through it. Suddenly his expression changed. He gave a start of surprise, read a few lines farther, and then exclaimed--

"Can this be true, are you really going to marry Mary?"

"It is quite true," Cuthbert said, quietly. "I first asked her a few weeks before my father's death when I met her down at Newquay. She refused me at that time, but we have both changed since then. I saw a great deal of her in Paris and she worked as a nurse in the American ambulance during the siege. I was one of her patients, having been shot through the body and brought in there insensible. Having a.s.sisted in saving my life she finally came to the conclusion that she could not do better than make that life a happy one. She had refused me because she considered, and rightly, that I was a useless member of society, and the fact that I was heir to Fairclose had no influence whatever with her, but finding that I had amended my ways and was leading an earnest and hard-working life, she accepted me, small though my income was."

"G.o.d bless her!" Mr. Brander said, fervently. "We never got on well together, Mr. Hartington. I had always an uneasy consciousness that she disapproved of me, and that she regarded me as a humbug, and as I was conscious of the fact myself this was not pleasant. So I was rather glad than otherwise that she should choose her own path. But I am indeed delighted at this. She is honesty and truth itself, and I pray she may make up to you for wrongs you have suffered at my hands."

"She will do much more than that, Mr. Brander, and you see I have good reason for what I said when I was here before, that the change in my fortune had been a benefit, since it had forced me to take up a profession and work at it. Had it not been for that I should never have won Mary. My being once again master of Fairclose would not have weighed with her in the slightest. She would not have married a mere idler, had he been a duke. Now you had better finish reading the deed."

The lawyer read it through to the end.

"You have indeed made it easy for me," he said, when he had laid it down.

"You see, I have an object in doing so, Mr. Brander. I told you that my interest in your reputation was as great as your own. I hope that in any case I should not have made a harsh use of the power I possessed. I am sure that I should not, especially as I felt how much I had benefited by the two years of work, but perhaps I might not have felt quite so anxious that no breath of suspicion should fall upon you had it not been for Mary."

"Does she know?" Mr. Brander asked.

"She does not know and will never hear it from me. She may have vague suspicions when she hears that you have made over Fairclose to me, but these will never be more than suspicions. Nor need your other daughters know. They may wonder, perhaps, that Mary should have so large a share of your property, but it will be easy for you to make some sort of explanation, as is given in this deed, of your reason for restoring Fairclose to me with her."

"They will be too glad to get away from here, to care much how it was brought about, and if afterwards they come to ask any questions about it, I can tell them so much of the truth that it had been found the sale of the property to me had been altogether illegal and irregular, and that in point of fact you had a right not only to the estate but to the 20,000 for which I mortgaged it to raise the purchase money, and to the two-years' rents.

"That is what I shall tell my wife. I think she has always had a vague suspicion that there was something shady about the transaction, and I shall tell her that, so far from regarding the loss of Fairclose as a hardship, I consider you have behaved with extreme generosity and kindness in the matter. Women do not understand business. I am sure it won't be necessary to go into details. She, too, will be heartily glad to leave Fairclose."

"Shall we go in and see them, Mr. Brander? You can tell them as much or as little of the news as you think fit, and after that you can give me some lunch. I want it badly."

"Thank you," Mr. Brander said, gratefully. "I did not like to ask you, but it will make matters easier."

He led the way into the drawing-room. Mrs. Brander was sitting at the window with an anxious look on her face. She knew of Cuthbert's former visit, and that he was again closeted with her husband, and had a strong feeling that something was wrong. The girls were sitting listlessly in easy-chairs, not even pretending to read the books that lay in their laps. They rose with a look of bright surprise on their faces as Cuthbert entered with their father.

"Why, Mr. Hartington, it is ages since we saw you."

"It is indeed--it is over two years."

"I have two surprising pieces of news to give you, Eliza. In the first place it has been discovered that there was a very serious flaw in the t.i.tle to Fairclose, and that the sale to me was altogether illegal. Mr.

Hartington has behaved most kindly and generously in the matter, but the result is he comes back to Fairclose and we move out."

The three ladies uttered an exclamation of pleasure. Fairclose had become hateful to them all, and at this moment it mattered little to them how it had come about that they were going to leave it.

"You don't mean to go back to the High Street, father?" Julia, the elder of the girls, asked anxiously.

"No, my dear; it will be a question to be settled between us where we will go, but I have decided to leave Abchester altogether. I feel that I require rest and quiet and shall give up business and go right out of it."

The girls both clapped their hands.

"And now for my second piece of news which will surprise you as much as the first. Your sister Mary is going to marry Mr. Hartington. The matter was settled in Paris, where they have both been shut up during the siege."

"That is, indeed, good news," Mrs. Brander said cordially, foreseeing at once the advantage of such a marriage.

The girls took their cue from her, and professed great pleasure at the news which, however, was not altogether welcome to them.

Mary, whom they had never liked, was to be mistress of Fairclose, and was to gain all the advantages that they had expected but had never obtained. The thought was not pleasant, but it was speedily forgotten in the excitement of the other news. Her mother, however, seeing the pleasure that her husband unmistakably felt at the thought of the marriage, was genuinely pleased. Not only might the connection be useful to the girls, but it might be invaluable in covering their retirement from Fairclose. There might be something more about that than her husband had said. At any rate this would silence all tongues and put an end to the vague anxiety that she had long felt. She had always liked Cuthbert, and had long ago cherished a faint hope that he might some day take to Mary.

"This all comes very suddenly upon us, Mr. Hartington. I suppose I ought to call you Cuthbert again, now."

"It would certainly sound more like old times, Mrs. Brander."

"Only think, my dear," the lawyer put in, "he proposed to Mary more than two years ago and she refused him. I suppose she never told you?"

"She never said a word on the subject," Mrs. Brander said, almost indignantly. "Why, it must have been before----" and she stopped.

"Before my short reign here as master, Mrs. Brander. Yes, I was down at Newquay sketching, when she was staying with her friend, Miss Treadwyn, and Mary was at the time too much occupied with the idea of raising womankind in the scale of humanity to think of taking up with a useless member of society like myself."

Mrs. Brander shook her head very gravely.

"It was a sad trouble to her father and myself," she said; "I hope she has got over those ideas."

"I think she has discovered that the world is too large for her to move," Cuthbert replied, with a smile. "At any rate she has undertaken the task of looking after me instead of reforming the world; it may be as difficult, perhaps, but it sounds less arduous."

At lunch the girls were engaged in an animated discussion as to where they would like to move to, but Mrs. Brander put an end to it by saying--

"We shall have plenty of time to talk that over, girls--it must depend upon many things. Your father's health will, of course, be the first consideration. At any rate, I shall set my face against London. So you can put that altogether out of your minds. An income that would be sufficient to establish one in a good position near a country or seaside town would be nothing in London. And now, Cuthbert, we want to hear a great deal more about our dear Mary. She writes so seldom, and of course she has been cut off for so long a time from us that we scarcely know what she is doing. In Germany she did not seem to be doing anything particular, but as she said in her letters, was studying the people and their language."

"That is what she was doing in Paris--at least that is what she came to do, but the siege put a stop to her studies, and she devoted herself to the much more practical work of nursing the wounded."

"Dear me, what an extraordinary girl she is," Mrs. Brander said, much shocked. "Surely there were plenty of women in Paris to nurse the wounded without her mixing herself up in such unpleasant work, of which she could know absolutely nothing."

"She was a very good nurse, nevertheless," Cuthbert said, quietly. "She worked in the American ambulance, under an American doctor, the other nurses and a.s.sistants being all American or English."