The stranger is advancing slowly: he is swarthy, and certainly not prepossessing. His hair is of that shade and texture that suggests unpleasantly the negro. His lips are a trifle thick, his eyes like sloes. There is, too, an expression of low cunning in these latter features that breeds disgust in the beholder.

He does not see Mona until he is within a yard of her, a thick bush standing between him and her. Being always a creature of impulse, she has stood still on seeing him, and is lost in wonder as to who he can be. One hand is lifting up her gown, the other is holding together the large soft white fleecy shawl that covers her shoulders, and is therefore necessarily laid upon her breast. Her att.i.tude is as picturesque as it is adorable.

The stranger, having come quite near, raises his head, and, seeing her, starts naturally, and also comes to a standstill. For a full half-minute he stares unpardonably, and then lifts his hat. Mona--who, as we have seen, is not great in emergencies--fails to notice the rudeness, in her own embarra.s.sment, and therefore bows politely in return to his salutation.

She is still wondering vaguely who he can be, when he breaks the silence.

"It is an early hour to be astir," he says, awkwardly; then, finding she makes no response, he goes on, still more awkwardly. "Can you tell me if this path will lead me to the road for Plumston?"

Plumston is a village near. The first remark may sound Too free and easy, but his manner is decorous in the extreme. In spite of the fact that her pretty head is covered with a silk handkerchief in lieu of a hat, he acknowledges her "within the line," and knows instinctively that her clothes, though simplicity itself, are perfect both in tint and in texture.

He groans within him that he cannot think of any speech bordering on the Grandisonian, that may be politely addressed to this sylvan nymph; but all such speeches fail him. Who can she be? Were ever eyes so liquid before, or lips so full of feeling?

"I am sorry I can tell you nothing," says Mona, shaking her head. "I was never in this wood before; I know nothing of it."

"_I_ should know all about it," says the stranger, with a curious contraction of the muscles of his face, which it may be he means for a smile. "In time I shall no doubt, but at present it is a sealed book to me. But the future will break all seals as far at least as Rodney Towers is concerned."

Then she knows she is speaking to "the Australian," (as she has heard him called), and, lifting her head, examines his face with renewed interest. Not a pleasant face by any means, yet not altogether bad, as she tells herself in the generosity of her heart.

"I am a stranger; I know nothing," she says again, hardly knowing what to say, and moving a little as though she would depart.

"I suppose I am speaking to Mrs. Rodney," he says, guessing wildly, yet correctly as it turns out, having heard, as all the country has besides, that the bride is expected at the Towers during the week. He has never all this time removed his black eyes from the perfect face before him with its crimson headgear. He is as one fascinated, who cannot yet explain where the fascination lies.

"Yes, I am Mrs. Rodney," says Mona, feeling some pride in her wedded name, in spite of the fact that two whole months have gone by since first she heard it. At this question, though, as coming from a stranger, she recoils a little within herself, and gathers up her gown more closely with a gesture impossible to misunderstand.

"You haven't asked me who I am," says the stranger, as though eager to detain her at any cost, still without a smile, and always with his eyes fixed upon her face. It seems as though he positively cannot remove them, so riveted are they.

"No;" she might in all truth have added, "because I did not care to know," but what she does say (for incivility even to an enemy would be impossible to Mona) is, "I thought perhaps you might not like it."

Even this is a small, if unconscious, cut, considering what objectionable curiosity he evinced about her name. But the Australian is above small cuts, for the good reason that he seldom sees them.

"I am Paul Rodney," he now volunteers,--"your husband's cousin, you know. I suppose," with a darkening of his whole face, "now I have told you who I am, it will not sweeten your liking for me."

"I have heard of you," says Mona, quietly. Then, pointing towards that part of the wood whither he would go, she says, coldly, "I regret I cannot tell you where this path leads to. Good-morning."

With this she inclines her head, and without another word goes back by the way she has come.

Paul Rodney, standing where she has left him, watches her retreating figure until it is quite out of sight, and the last gleam of the crimson silk handkerchief is lost in the distance, with a curious expression upon his face. It is an odd mixture of envy, hatred, and admiration. If there is a man on earth he hates with cordial hatred, it is Geoffrey Rodney who at no time has taken the trouble to be even outwardly civil to him. And to think this peerless creature is his wife! For thus he designates Mona,--the Australian being a man who would be almost sure to call the woman he admired a "peerless creature."

When she is quite gone, he pulls himself together with a jerk, and draws a heavy sigh, and thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, continues his walk.

At breakfast Mona betrays the fact that she has met Paul Rodney during her morning ramble, and tells all that pa.s.sed between him and her,--on being closely questioned,--which news has the effect of bringing a cloud to the brow of Sir Nicholas and a frown to that of his mother.

"Such presumption, walking in our wood without permission," she says, haughtily.

"My dear mother, you forget the path leading from the southern gate to Plumston Road has been open to the public for generations. He was at perfect liberty to walk there."

"Nevertheless, it is in very bad taste his taking advantage of that absurd permission, considering how he is circ.u.mstanced with regard to us," says Lady Rodney. "You wouldn't do it yourself, Nicholas, though you find excuses for him."

A very faint smile crosses Sir Nicholas's lips.

"Oh, no, I shouldn't," he says, gently; and then the subject drops.

And here perhaps it will be as well to explain the trouble that at this time weighs heavily upon the Rodney family.

CHAPTER XVIII.

HOW OLD SIR GEORGE HATED HIS FIRSTBORN--AND HOW HE MADE HIS WILL--AND HOW THE EARTH SWALLOWED IT.

Now, old Sir George Rodney, grandfather of the present baronet, had two sons, Geoffrey and George. Now, Geoffrey he loved, but George he hated.

And so great by years did this hatred grow that after a bit he sought how he should leave the property away from his eldest-born, who was George, and leave it to Geoffrey, the younger,--which was hardly fair; for "what," says Aristotle, "is justice?--to give every man his own."

And surely George, being the elder, had first claim. The entail having been broken during the last generation, he found this easy to accomplish; and so after many days he made a will, by which the younger son inherited all, to the exclusion of the elder.

But before this, when things had gone too far between father and son, and harsh words never to be forgotten on either side had been uttered, George, unable to bear longer the ignominy of his position (being of a wild and pa.s.sionate yet withal generous disposition), left his home, to seek another and happier one in foreign lands.

Some said he had gone to India, others to Van Diemen's Land, but in truth none knew, or cared to know, save Elspeth, the old nurse, who had tended him and his father before him, and who in her heart nourished for him an undying affection.

There were those who said she clung to him because of his wonderful likeness to the picture of his grandfather in the south gallery, Sir Launcelot by name, who in choicest ruffles and most elaborate _queue_, smiled gayly down upon the pa.s.sers-by.

For this master of the Towers (so the story ran) Elspeth, in her younger days, had borne a love too deep for words, when she herself was soft and rosy-cheeked, with a heart as tender and romantic as her eyes were blue, and when her lips, were for all the world like "cherries ripe."

But this, it may be, was all village slander, and was never borne out by anything. And Elspeth had married the gardener's son, and Sir Launcelot had married an earl's daughter; and when the first baby was born at the "big house," Elspeth came to the Towers and nursed him as she would have nursed her own little bairn, but that Death, "dear, beauteous Death, the jewel of the just, shining nowhere but in the dark," sought and claimed her own little one two days after its birth.

After that she had never again left the family, serving it faithfully while strength stayed with her, knowing all its secrets and all its old legends, and many things, it may be, that the child she nursed at her bosom never knew.

For him--strange as it may seem--she had ever but little love. But when he married, and George, the eldest boy, was given into her arms, and as he grew and developed and showed himself day by day to be the very prototype of his grandsire, she "took to him," as the servants said, and clung to him--and afterwards to his memory--until her dying day.

When the dark, wayward, handsome young man went away, her heart went with him, and she alone perhaps knew anything of him after his departure. To his father his absence was a relief; he did not disguise it; and to his brother (who had married, and had then three children, and had of late years grown estranged from him) the loss was not great.

Nor did the young madam,--as she was called,--the mother of our present friends, lose any opportunity of fostering and keeping alive the ill will and rancor that existed for him in his father's heart.

So the grudge, being well watered, grew and flourished, and at last, as I said, the old man made a will one night, in the presence of the gardener and his nephew, who witnessed it, leaving all he possessed--save the t.i.tle and some outside property, which he did not possess--to his younger son. And, having made this will, he went to his bed, and in the cold night, all alone, he died there, and was found in the morning stiff and stark, with the gay spring sunshine pouring in upon him, while the birds sang without as though to mock death's power, and the flowers broke slowly into life.

But when they came to look for the will, lo! it was nowhere to be found.

Each drawer and desk and cabinet was searched to no avail. Never did the lost doc.u.ment come to light.

Day after day they sought in vain; but there came a morning when news of the lost George's demise came to them from Australia, and then the search grew languid and the will was forgotten. And they hardly took pains even to corroborate the tidings sent them from that far-off land but, accepting the rightful heir's death as a happy fact, ascended the throne, and reigned peacefully for many years.

And when Sir George died, Sir Nicholas, as we know, governed in his stead, and "all went merry as a marriage-bell," until a small cloud came out of the south, and grew and grew and waxed each day stronger, until it covered all the land.

For again news came from Australia that the former tidings of George Rodney's death had been false; that he had only died a twelvemonth since; that he had married almost on first going out, and that his son was coming home to dispute Sir Nicholas's right to house and home and t.i.tle.

And now where was the missing will? Almost all the old servants were dead or scattered. The gardener and his nephew wore no more; even old Elspeth was lying at rest in the cold churchyard, having ceased long since to be even food for worms. Only her second nephew--who had lived with her for years in the little cottage provided for her by the Rodneys, when she was too old and infirm to do aught but sit and dream of days gone by--was alive, and he, too, had gone to Australia on her death and had not been heard of since.

It was all terrible,--this young man coming and the thought that, no matter how they might try to disbelieve in his story, still it might be true.