THE gentlemen came upstairs looking very cheerful and friendly, so of course everything had been satisfactory in their conversation. After a little while Mr. Cresswell came to tell me all about it. He said the papers seemed all quite satisfactory, and he had no doubt Mrs. Langham was really Richard Mortimer’s daughter, the nearest, and indeed only relation, on the Mortimer side of the house, that we had in the world.
“I have no doubt about it,” said I; “but I am very glad, all the same, to have it confirmed. Now, my dear child, you know that we belong to each other. My sister and I are, on your father’s side, the only relations you have in the world.”
Milly turned round to receive the kiss I gave her, but trembled and looked as if she dared not lift her eyes to me. Somehow I believe that idea which brightened her husband, came like a cold shadow between her and me, the thought that I would take care of her when he was away. It was very unreasonable, to be sure; but, dear, dear, it was very natural! I did not quarrel with her for the impulse of her heart.
“But softly, softly, my dear lady,” said Mr. Cresswell; “the papers all seem very satisfactory, I admit; but the ladies are always jumping at conclusions. I shall have to get my Irish correspondent to go over the whole matter, and test it, step by step. Not but that I am perfectly satisfied; but nobody can tell what may happen. A suit might arise, and some of these documents might be found to have a flaw in it. We must be cautious, very cautious, in all matters of succession.”
“A suit! Why, wouldn’t Richard Mortimer, if he were alive, be heir-at-law? Who could raise a suit?” cried I.
I suppose he saw that there was some anxiety in my look which I did not express; and, to be sure, he owed me something for having thwarted and baffled him. “There is no calculating what mysterious claimant might appear,” said Mr. Cresswell, quite jauntily. “I heard somebody say, not very long ago, that all the romance now-a-days came through the hands of{253} conveyancers and attorneys. My dear lady, leave it to me; I understand my own business, never fear.”
I felt as if a perfect fever possessed me for the moment. My pulse beat loud, and my ears rang and tingled. “What mysterious claimant could there be to the Park?” I cried. I betrayed myself. He saw in a moment that this was the dread that was on my mind.
“Quite impossible to say. I know no loophole one could creep in through,” he said, with a little shrug of his shoulders and a pretended laugh. “But these things defy all probabilities. It is best to make everything safe for our young friends here.”
Now this, I confess, nettled me exceedingly; for though we had taken so much notice of his daughter, and had lived so quietly for many years, neither Sarah nor I had ever given up the pretensions of the Mortimers to be one of the first families in the county. And to hear an attorney speaking of “our young friends here,” as if they were falling heirs to some old maiden lady’s little bit of property! I was very much exasperated.
“It seems to me, Mr. Cresswell, that you make a little mistake,” said I. “Our family is not in such a position that its members could either be lost or found without attracting observation. In a different rank of life such things might happen; but the Mortimers, and all belonging to them, are too well known among English families, if I am not mistaken, to allow of any unknown connections turning up.”
Mr. Cresswell immediately saw that he had gone too far, and he muttered a kind of apology and got out of it the best way he could. I drew back my chair a little, naturally indignant. But Cresswell, whose father and his father’s father had been the confidential agents of our family, who knew very well what we had been, and what we were whenever we chose to assert ourselves,—to think of him, a Chester attorney, patronising our heirs and successors! You may imagine I had a good right to be angry, and especially as I could see he was quite pluming himself on his cleverness in finding out what was in my mind. He thought it was a whim that had taken possession of me, no doubt,—a kind of monomania. I could even see, as he thought it all quietly over by himself over his cup of tea, what a smile came upon his face.
Young Langham, however, just then contrived to gain my attention. He did it very carefully, watching his opportunities when Milly was not looking at him, or when he thought she{254} was not looking at him. “I am heartily glad to have found you out now, of all times,” said the young man. “Milly would not have gone to her relations in Ireland, and I have no relations. She will be very lonely when we are gone. Poor Milly! It is a hard life I have brought her into, and she so young.”
“You are not much older yourself,” said I; “and if you children bring such trouble on yourselves, you must be all the braver to bear it. I doubt if she’d change with Sara Cresswell at this moment, or any other unmarried young creature in the world.”
The young man looked up at me gratefully. “I can’t tell you how good she is,” he said, in his simplicity. “She never breaks down nor complains of anything. I don’t understand how she has saved and spared our little means and made them do; but she has, somehow. Now, though she’s pale with thinking of this—don’t you think she&rs............