Lady Lancaster was pleased to be very gracious indeed to her returned nephew.
"Ah, you are as big and handsome as ever, Clive!" she said, "and well, of course. I believe you never were sick in your life?"
"Hardly ever," he replied, with a laugh, adding, with veiled anxiety: "I hear that you have killed the fatted calf in my honor, Aunt Lydia. Whom have you staying with you?"
"A few nice people from London, Clive—twenty in all, I think. There are old Lord and Lady Brierly, and their son and daughter, Sir Charles Winton, Colonel Livingston, Mark Dean and his pretty sister, the Earl of Eastwood and his beautiful daughter, Lady Adela, the Cliffords, and some other people. You will meet them all at dinner. I think you know them all?"
"Yes, I suppose so," he answered, rather absently.
"To-night there will be a little informal dance—the young folks were so eager for it, you know. And, Clive, that young friend of yours, Lieutenant De Vere—I hope you brought him down with you?"
"I did not," he replied.
"I am sorry; but I shall send him a note to-morrow. Did you have a fair trip over, Clive?"
"Very fair," he replied, in a peculiar tone.
"I am glad to hear that. Oh, by the way, Clive, did you bring that child to the housekeeper?"
"Yes," he replied, and a slight smile twitched the corners of the mustached lips.
"I hope she wasn't troublesome," said the haughty old lady, carelessly.
"She was troublesome—I suppose all of the female sex are," he answered, lightly.
"Well, it couldn't be helped, or I would not have bothered you. I had to send for the young one, or West would have gone off herself to fetch her. I'm glad you brought her. The trouble is all over now, so I suppose you don't care."
"Oh, no!" said Captain Lancaster, with rather grim pleasantry.
And then she touched him on the arm and said, significantly:
"There's some one here I want very much for you to meet, Clive."
"Ah, is there?" he said, shrinking a little from the look and the tone. "I thought you wanted me to meet them all."
"I do; but there is one in particular. It is a lady, Clive," she said, giving him a significant smile that he thought hideous.
He tried gently to wrench himself away from her.
"Well, I must go and take my siesta and dress before I meet them," he said.
"Wait a minute, Clive. I must speak to you," she said, in a tone that savored of authority.
"Will not some other time do as well?" he inquired, glancing rather ungallantly at his watch.
"No time like the present," she answered, resolutely. "You are trying to put me off again, Clive; but beware how you trifle with me, my Lord Lancaster, or I shall know how to punish you," she said, shaking her skinny, diamond-ringed finger at him.
His handsome face flushed haughtily.
"Go on, madame," he said, with a slight, mocking bow. "I am the slave of your pleasure."
She regarded the handsome, insubordinate face in dead silence a minute.
"You already anticipate what I would say," she said. "Why is the idea so distasteful to you, Clive? Any young man in your position might be transported with joy at the thought of inheriting my fortune."
He bowed silently.
"You know," she went on, coolly, "you can never come home to live on your ancestral acres unless you marry money or inherit it."
"Thanks to the folly of my predecessors," he said, bitterly.
"Never mind your predecessors, Clive. There is a woman here whom I want you to marry. Win her and make her mistress of Lancaster Park, and my fortune is yours."
"Am I to have her for the asking?" he inquired, with a delicate sarcasm.
"It is very likely you may," she answered. "Handsome faces like yours make fools of most women."
"And who is the lady it is to charm in this case?" he inquired, with bitter brevity.
"It is the Lady Adela Eastwood," she replied, concisely.
He gave a low whistle of incredulity.
"The Lady Adela Eastwood—the daughter of a hundred earls!" he cried. "Your ambition soars high, Aunt Lydia."
"Not too high," she replied, shaking her old head proudly, until the great red jewels in her ears flashed like drops of blood.
CHAPTER XX
"Not too high," repeated Lady Lancaster, sagely. "The lords of Lancaster have married earls' daughters before to-day."
"Yes, in their palmy days," said Clive Lancaster; "but not now, when their patrimony is wasted, their lands encumbered with taxes, and their last descendant earning a paltry living in her majesty's service."
"Lady Adela is as poor as you are," said the withered old woman, significantly.
"No?"
"Yes."
"But I thought that the Earl of Eastwood was very rich."
"He was once; but he and his spendthrift sons have made ducks and drakes of the money at the gaming-table. Lady Adela will have no portion at all. She will be compelled to marry a fortune."
"So you have placed yours at her disposal?" he said, with hardly repressed scorn.
"Yes," coolly, "if she takes my nephew with it. But, seriously, Clive, it is the best match for you both. You will have money; she has beauty and exalted station. Married to each other, you two will be a power in the social world; apart, neither of you will count for much. You will have rank, but that will be a mere incumbrance to you without the ability to sustain its dignity properly."
"If you only knew how little I care for social power," he said. "The life of a soldier suits me. I have no great ambition for wealth and power."
"You are no true Lancaster if you are willing to let the old name and the old place run down!" she broke out, indignantly. "Ah, I wish that I might have borne a son to my husband! Then this degenerate scion of a noble race need never have been roused from his dolce far niente to sustain its ancient glory."
His lip curled in cold disdain of her wild ranting.
"At least the old name will never be dishonored by me," he said. "I have led a life that no one can cry shame upon. My record is pure."
Glancing at his flushed face and proud eyes, she saw that she had gone too far. She did not want to rouse that defiant mood inherent in all the Lancasters. She was afraid of it.
"I was hasty," she said. "Forgive me, Clive. But I am so anxious to have you fall in with my plans. I have no kin of my own, and I am anxious to leave my money to you, the heir of my late husband's title. If you fall in with my views I shall give you from the day of your marriage ten thousand a year, and after my death the whole income shall be yours. If you cross me, if you decline to marry as I wish you to do, I shall hunt up other Lancasters—there are distant connections in London, I think—and I shall leave everything to them instead of to you."
Her black eyes glittered with menace, and there was an evil, triumphant smile on her thin, cruel lips. She knew the extent of her power, and was bent on using it to the full.
"Money is a good thing to have, Aunt Lydia. I should like to have yours when you are done with it, I don't deny that," he said. "There may be some things better than money, if," slowly, "one could have them, but—"
"Better than money?" she interrupted, angry and sarcastic, and frightened all at once, for fear that he was about to refuse her. "Pray tell me what those desirable things may be."
"You did not hear me out," he answered, calmly. "I was about to say there might be, but I was not sure. We will not discuss that unknown quantity."
"I think not," she answered, dryly. "It might be more pertinent to discuss Lady Adela now. What do you say, Clive? Shall you pay your court to her?"
A deep red flushed all over his fair, handsome face.
"She might decline the honor," he said.
"Pshaw! she might be a fool, but she isn't," said my lady, sharply. "She will not decline. She has an inkling of what I mean to do. I have talked with the earl. He thinks it would be a pleasant and pertinent arrangement for the house of Lancaster. You know you have to think of your heirs, Clive, and to do the best you can for their future."