Donal Grant

"Lord Morven cannot live long," said Donal as they went. "It is not to be wished he should."

Mr. Graeme returned no answer. Donal resumed.

"I think I ought to let you know at once that you are heir to the title."

"I think you owe the knowledge to myself!" said the factor, not without a touch of contempt.

"By no means," rejoined Donal: "on presumption, after lord Forgue, you told me;—after lord Morven, I tell you."

"I am at a loss to imagine on what you found such a statement," said Graeme, beginning to suspect insanity.

"Naturally; no one knows it but myself. Lord Morven knows that his son cannot succeed, but he does not know that you can. I am prepared, if not to prove, at least to convince you that he and his son's mother were not married."

Mr. Graeme was for a moment silent. Then he laughed a little laugh—not a pleasant one. "Another of Time's clownish tricks!" he said to himself: "the earl the factor on the family-estate!" Donal did not like the way he took it, but saw how natural it was.

"I hope you have known me long enough," he said, "to believe I have contrived nothing?"

"Excuse me, Mr. Grant: the whole business looks suspicious. The girl was dying! You knew it!"

"I do not understand you."

"What did you marry her for?"

"To make her my wife."

"Pray what could be the good of that except—?"

"Does it need any explanation but that we loved each other?"

"You will find it difficult to convince the world that such was your sole motive."

"Having no care for the opinion of the world, I shall be satisfied if I convince you. The world needs never hear of the thing. Would you, Mr. Graeme, have had me not marry her, because the world, including not a few honest men like yourself, would say my object was the property?"

"Don't put the question to me; I am not the proper person to answer it. There is not a man in a hundred millions who with the chance would not have done the same, or whom all the rest would not blame for doing it. It would have been better for you, however, that there had been no will."

"How?"

"It makes it look the more like a scheme:—the will might have been disputed."

"Why do you say—might have been?"

"Because it is not worth disputing now. If the marriage stands, it annuls the will."

"I did not know; and I suppose she did not know either. Or perhaps she wanted to make the thing sure: if the marriage was not enough, the will would be—she may have thought. But I knew nothing of it."

"You did not?"

"Of course I did not."

Mr. Graeme held his peace. For the first time he doubted Donal's word.

"But I wanted to have a little talk with you," resumed Donal. "I want to know whether you think your duty all to the owner of the land, or in any measure to the tenants also."

"That is easy to answer: one employed by the landlord can owe the tenant nothing."

It was not just the answer he would have given to another questioner.

"Do you not owe him justice?" asked Donal.

"Every legal advantage I ought to take for my employer."

"Even to the grinding of the faces of the poor?"

"I have nothing to do, as his employé, with my own ideas as to what may be equitable."

He drew the line thus hard in pure opposition to Donal.

"What then would you say if the land were your own? Would you say you had it solely for your own and your family's good, or for that of the tenants as well?"

"I should very likely reason that what was good for them would in the long run be good for me too.—But if you want to know how I have treated the tenants, there are intelligent men amongst them, not at all prejudiced in favour of the factor!"

"I wish you would be open with me," said Donal.

"I prefer keeping my own place," rejoined Mr. Graeme.

"You speak as one who found a change in me," returned Donal. "There is none."

So saying he shook hands with him, bade him good morning, and turned with the depression of failure.

"I did not lead up to the point properly!" he said to himself.

CHAPTER LXXXIII.

INSIGHT

Mr. Graeme was a good sort of man, and a gentleman; but he was not capable of meeting Donal on the ground on which he approached him: on that level he had never set foot. There is nothing more disappointing to the generous man than the way in which his absolute frankness is met by the man of the world—always looking out for motives, and imagining them after what is in himself.

There was great confidence between the brother and sister, and as he walked homeward, Mr. Graeme was not so well pleased with himself as to think with satisfaction on the report of the interview he could give Kate. He did not accuse himself with regard to anything he had said, but he felt his behaviour influenced by jealousy of the low-born youth who had supplanted him. For, if Percy could not succeed to the title, neither could he have succeeded to the property; and but for the will or the marriage, perhaps but for the two together, he would himself have come in for that also! The will was worth nothing except the marriage was disputed: annul the marriage, and the will was of force!

He told his sister, as nearly as he could, all that had passed between them.

"If he wanted me to talk to him," he said, "why did he tell me that about Forgue? It was infernally stupid of him! But what's bred in the bone—! A gentleman 's not made in a day!"

"Nor in a thousand years, Hector!" rejoined his sister. "Donal Grant is a gentleman in the best sense of the word! That you say he is not, lets me see you are vexed with yourself. He is a little awkward sometimes, I confess; but only when he is looking at a thing from some other point of view, and does not like to say you ought to have been looking at it from the same. And you can't say he shuffles, for he never stops till he has done his best to make you!—What have you been saying to him, Hector?"

"Nothing but what I have told you; it's rather what I have not been saying!" answered her brother. "He would have had me open out to him, and I wouldn't. How could I! Whatever I said that pleased him, would have looked as if I wanted to secure my situation! Hang it all! I have a good mind to throw it up. How is a Graeme to serve under a bumpkin?"

"The man is not a bumpkin; he is a scholar and a poet!" said the lady.