A Traitor in London. Fergus Hume

       CHAPTER I.

      CUPID IN LEADING STRINGS.

      "It's an infernal shame!"

      "I call it common sense!"

      "Call it what you please, Malet. I deny your right to keep back my money."

      "Right? Your father's will gives me every right. If I approve of your marriage, the money will be paid down on your wedding day."

      "But you don't approve, confound you!"

      "Certainly not. Brenda Scarse is not the wife for you, Harold."

      "That's my business."

      "Mine also--under the will. Come, come now; don't lose your temper."

      The elder speaker smiled as he proffered this advice, knowing well that he was provoking his cousin beyond all bounds. Harold Burton was young, fiery-tempered, and in love. To be thwarted in his love was something more than exasperating to this impetuous lover. The irritating request that he should keep his temper caused him to lose it promptly; and for the next five minutes Mr. Gilbert Malet was witness of a fine exhibition of unrestrained rage. He trembled for the furniture, almost for his own personal safety, though he managed to preserve a duly dignified outward calm. While Harold stamped about the room, his burly cousin posed before a fireless grate and trimmed his nails, and waited until the young man should have exhausted this wholly unnecessary display of violence.

      They were in the library of Holt Manor. It was a sombre, monkish room; almost ascetic in its severity. Bookcases and furniture were of black oak, carpet and curtains of a deep red color; and windows of stained glass subdued the light suitably for study and meditation. But on this occasion the windows were open to the brilliant daylight of an August afternoon, and shafts of golden sunshine poured into the room. From the terrace stretching before the house, vast woods sloped toward Chippingholt village, where red-roofed houses clustered round a brawling stream, and rose again on the further side to sweep to the distant hills in unbroken masses of green. Manor and village took their Teutonic names from these forests, and buried in greenery, might have passed as the domain of the Sleeping Beauty. Her palace was undoubtedly girdled by just such a wood.

      But this sylvan beauty did not appeal to the pair in the library. The stout, domineering owner of the Manor who trimmed his nails and smiled blandly had the stronger position of the two, and he knew it well--so well that he could afford to ignore the virile wrath of his ward. Strictly speaking, Captain Burton was not a ward, if that word implies minority. He was thirty years of age, in a lancer regiment, and possessed of an income sufficient to emancipate him from the control of his cousin Gilbert. Still, though possible for one, his income was certainly not possible for two, and if Gilbert chose he could increase his capital by twenty thousand pounds. But the stumbling-block was the condition attached to the disposal of the money. Only if Malet approved of the prospective bride was he to part with the legacy. As such he did not approve of Brenda Scarse, so matters were at a standstill. Nor could Harold well see how he was to move them. Finding all his rage of no avail, he gradually subsided and had recourse to methods more pacific.

      "Let me understand this matter clearly," he said, taking a seat with a resolute air. "Independent of my three hundred a year, you hold twenty thousand pounds of my money."

      "To be correct," replied Malet in a genial tone, "I hold forty thousand pounds, to be equally shared between you and your brother Wilfred when you marry. The three hundred a year which you each possess I have nothing to do with."

      "Well, I want to marry, and----"

      "You do--against my wishes. If I do not approve of your choice I need not pay you this money. I can hold it until I die."

      "And then?" asked Harold, sharply.

      Gilbert shrugged his burly shoulders. "Then it goes to you and Wilfred direct. There is no provision made for my handing it over to another trustee. You are bound to get your share in the long run; but I am not thinking of dying just yet, my dear Harold."

      "I can't imagine what possessed my father ever to make so foolish a will."

      "Your father was guided by experience, my boy. He made a miserable marriage himself, and did not want you or Wilfred to go and do likewise. He had evidently confidence in my judgment, and knew that I would stand between you and folly."

      "Confound your impudence," shouted Harold, his dark face crimson with anger. "You're only fifteen years older than I am. At the age of thirty I am surely capable of selecting my own wife!"

      "I hardly think so, when you select Miss Scarse!"

      "What the deuce have you against her?"

      "Nothing, personally. She is a nice girl, a very nice girl, but poor. A man of your extravagant tastes should marry money. Brenda is well enough, for herself," continued Malet, with odious familiarity, for which Harold could have struck him, "but her father!--Stuart Scarse is a Little Englander!"

      Captain Burton was taken aback at the irrelevancy of this remark. "What the devil has that to do with her or me?" he demanded bluntly.

      "Everything, if you love your country. You belong to a Conservative family. You are a soldier, and the time is coming when we must all rally round the flag and preserve the Empire. Scarse is a member of that pernicious band which desires the dismemberment of our glorious----

      "Oh, I'm sick of this!" Harold jumped up and crammed on his cap. "Your political ideas have nothing to do with my marriage. You have no reason to object to Miss Scarse. Once for all, will you pay me this money?"

      "No, I will not. I shall not agree to your marrying the daughter of a Little Englander."

      "Then I shall throw the estate into Chancery."

      Malet looked uneasy, but sneered. "By all means, if you want the whole forty thousand to go to fee the lawyers! But, before you risk losing your money, let me advise you to make sure of Miss Brenda Scarse!"

      "What do you mean?"