A Secret Inheritance. Volume 1 of 3

It was the first time she had ever called me "sir," and I understood it to be a recognition of my position as Master of Rosemullion.

"Do you intend to seek another service?" I asked.

"No, sir; it is not likely I shall enter service again. You are aware that your father was good enough to provide for me."

"Yes, and I am pleased that he did so. Had he forgotten, I should have been glad to acknowledge in a fitting way your long service in our family."

"You are very kind, sir."

"Where do you go to from here?"

"I have a home in Cornwall, sir."

"Indeed. I do not remember that you have ever visited it."

"It is many years since I saw it, sir."

"Not once, I think, since you have been with us."

"Not once, sir."

"Your duties here have been onerous. Although we are in mourning you must be glad to be released." I pointed to her dress; she, like myself, was dressed in black; but she made no comment on my remark. "Will you give me your address, Mrs. Fortress?"

"Willingly, sir."

She wrote it on an envelope which I placed before her, and I put it into my pocket-book.

"If I wish to communicate with you, this will be certain to find you?"

"Yes, sir, quite certain."

"Circumstances may occur," I said, "which may render it necessary for me to seek information from you."

"Respecting whom, or what, sir?"

"It is hard to say. But, perhaps respecting my mother."

"I am afraid, sir, it will be useless to communicate with me upon that subject."

"Mrs. Fortress," I said, nettled at the decisive tone in which she spoke, "it occurs to me that during the many years you have been with us you have been unobservant of me."

"You are mistaken, sir."

"Outwardly unobservant, perhaps I should have said. When you entered my father's service I must have been a very young child. I am now a man."

"Yes, sir, you will be twenty-two on your next birthday. I wish you a happy life, whether it be a long or a short one."

"And being a man, it is natural that I should desire to know something of what has been hidden from me."

"You are assuming, sir, that something has been hidden."

"I have not been quite a machine, Mrs. Fortress. Give me credit for at least an average amount of intelligence. It is not possible for me to be blind to the fact that there has been a mystery in our family."

"It is you who say so, sir, not I."

"I know, and know, also, that of your own prompting you will say little or nothing. To what can I appeal? To your womanly sympathies, to your sense of justice? Until this moment I have been silent. As a boy I had to submit, and latterly as a man. My parents were living, and their lightest wish was a law to me. But the chains are loosened now; they have fallen from me into my mother's grave. Surely you cannot, in reason or injustice, refuse to answer a few simple questions."

"Upon the subject you have referred to, sir, I have nothing to tell."

"That is to say, you are determined to tell me nothing."

She rose from her chair, and said, "With your permission, sir, I will wish you farewell."

"No, no; sit down again for a few minutes. I will not detain you long, and I will endeavour not to press unwelcome questions upon you. In all human probability this is the last opportunity we shall have of speaking together; for even supposing that at some future time you should yourself desire to volunteer explanations which you now withhold from me, you will not know how to communicate with me."

"Is it your intention to leave Rosemullion, sir?"

"I shall make speedy arrangements to quit it for ever. It has not been so filled with light and love as to become endeared to me. I shall leave it not only willingly but with pleasure, and I shall never again set foot in it."

"There is no saying what may happen in the course of life, sir. Have you made up your mind where you are going to live?"

"In no settled place. I shall travel."

"Change of scene will be good for you, sir. It is altogether the best thing you could do."

"Of that," I said impatiently, "I am the best judge. My future life can be of no interest to you. It is of the past I wish to speak. Have you any objection to inform me for how long you have been in my mother's service?"

"You were but a little over two years of age, sir, at the time I entered it."

"For nearly twenty years, then. You do not look old, Mrs. Fortress."

"I am forty-two, sir."

"Then you were twenty-three when you came to us?"

"Yes, sir."

"We were poor at the time, and were living in common lodgings in London?"

"That is so, sir."

"My father's means were so straitened, if my memory does not betray me, that every shilling of our income had to be reckoned. You did not-excuse me for the question, Mrs. Fortress-you did not serve my parents for love?"

"No, sir; it was purely a matter of business between your father and me."

"You are-again I beg you to excuse me-not the kind of person to work for nothing, or even for small wages."

"Your father paid me liberally, sir."