"No," said Lance, "my dear fellow! You have stood it wisely and bravely so far, go on to do so. I don't feel the least certain that this is not mere bullying. She did not tell you any particulars?"
"No, certainly not."
"Not the name of this supposed predecessor of Edgar's? Where she may have been married, or how? How she parted from him, or how she knows he was alive? It sounds to me a bogus notion, got up to put the screw on you, by surprise. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll go down to the shop tomorrow morning, see the woman, and extract the truth if possible, and I fully expect that the story will shrink up to nothing."
"'Tis not the estate I care for," said Gerald, looking somewhat cheered. "It is my father's honour and name. If that can be cleared-"
"Do not I care?" said Lance. "My dear brother Edgar, my model of all that was noble and brilliant-whom Felix loved above all! Nay, and you, Gerald, our hope! I would give anything and everything to free you from this stain, though I trust it will prove only mud that will not stick. Anyway you have shown your true, faithful Underwood blood. Now go to bed and sleep if you can. Don't say a word, nor look more like a ghost than you can help-or we shall have to rouge ourselves for our parts. My boy, my boy! You are Edgar's boy, anyway."
And Lancelot kissed the young pale cheek as he had done when the little wounded orphan clung to him fourteen years ago, or as he kissed his own Felix.
Whatever the night was to Gerald, long was the night, and long the light hours of the morning to the ever sleepless Lance before he could rise and make his way to the shop with any hope of gaining admission, and many were the sighs and prayers that this tale might be confuted, and that the matter might be to the blessing of the youth to whom he felt more warmly now than since those winning baby days had given place to more ordinary boyhood. He had a long time to pace up and down watching the sparkling water, and feeling the fresh wind on the brow, which was as capable as ever of aching over trouble and perplexity, and dreading above all the effect on the sister, whose consolation and darling Gerald had always been. How little he had thought, when he had stood staunch against his brother Edgar's persuasions, that Zoraya was to be the bane of that life which had begun so gaily!
When at last the door was unfastened, and, as before, by Ludmilla, he greeted her kindly, and as she evidently expected some fresh idea about the masque, he gave her his card, and asked her to beg her mother to come and speak to him. She started at the name and said-
"Oh, sir, you will do nothing to hurt him-Mr. Underwood?"
"It is the last thing I wish," he said earnestly, and Ludmilla showed him into a little parlour, full of the fumes of tobacco, and sped away, but he had a long time to wait, for probably Mother Butterfly's entire toilette had to be taken in hand.
Before she appeared Lancelot heard a man's voice, somewhere in the entry, saying-
"Oh! the young ass has been fool enough to let it out, has he? I suppose this is the chap that will profit? You'll have your wits about you."
Lance was still his old self enough to receive the lady with-
"I beg to observe that I am not the 'chap who will profit' if this miserable allegation holds water. I am come to understand the truth."
The woman looked frightened, and the man came to her rescue, having evidently heard, and this Lance preferred, for he always liked to deal with mankind rather than womankind. Having gone so far there was not room for reticence, and the man took up the word.
"Madame cannot be expected to disclose anything to the prejudice of her son and herself, unless it was made worth her while."
"Perhaps not," said Lance, as he looked her over in irony, and drew the conclusion that the marriage was a fact accomplished; "but she has demanded two hundred pounds from her son, on peril of exposure, and if the facts are not substantiated, there is such a thing as an action for conspiracy, and obtaining money on false pretences."
"Nothing has been obtained!" said the woman, beginning to cry. "He was very hard on his poor mother."
"Who forsook him as an infant, cast off his father, and only claims him in order to keep a disgraceful, ruinous secret hanging over his life for ever, in order to extort money."
"Come now, this is tall talk, sir," said O'Leary; "the long and short of it is, what will the cove, yourself, or whoever it is that you speak for, come down for one way or another?"
"Nothing," responded Lance.
Neither of the estimable couple spoke or moved under an announcement so incredible to them, and he went on-
"Gerald Underwood would rather lose everything than give hush-money to enable him to be a robber, and my elder brother would certainly give no reward for what would be the greatest grief in his life."
O'Leary grinned as if he wanted to say, "Have you asked him?"
"The priest," she muttered.
"Ay, the meddling parson who has done for you! He would have to come down pretty handsomely."
Lancelot went on as if he had not heard these asides.
"I am a magistrate; I can give you in charge at once to the police, and have you brought before the Mayor for conspiracy, when you will have to prove your words, or confess them to be a lie."
He was not in the least certain that where there was no threatening letter, this could succeed, but he knew that the preliminaries would be alarming enough to elicit something, and accordingly Mrs. O'Leary began to sob out-
"It was when I was a mere child, a bambina, and he used me so cruelly."
There was the first thread, and on the whole, the couple were angry enough with Gerald, his refined appearance and air of careless prosperity, to be willing that he should have a fall, and Lance thus extracted that the "he" who had been cruel was a Neapolitan impresario in a small way, who had detected that Zoraya, when a very little child, had a charming voice, of which indeed she still spoke with pride, saying Lida would never equal it. Her parents were semi- gipsies, Hungarian, and had wandered all over the Austrian empire, acting, singing, and bringing up their children to the like. They had actually sold her to the impresario, who had sealed the compact, and hoped to secure the valuable commodity by making her his wife. In his security he had trained her in the severest mode, and visited the smallest want of success with violence and harshness, so that her life was utterly miserable, and on meeting her brother, who had become a member of a German band, she had contrived to make her escape with him, and having really considerable proficiency, the brother and sister had prospered, and through sundry vicissitudes had arrived at being "stars" in Allen's troupe, where Edgar Underwood, or, as he was there known, Tom Wood, had unfortunately joined them; and the sequel was known to Lancelot, but he could not but listen and gather up the details, disgusted as he was-how the prima donna had accepted his attention as her right, till her jealousy was excited by his evident attraction to "the little English doll, for whom he killed his man"; how she resolved to win him, and how scandalous reports at last had brought him to offer marriage, unknowing, it was plain, of her past. It was not possible to guess how much she was still keeping back, speaking under terror and compulsion as she did. But she declared that he had never loved her, and was always wanting her to be like ces Anglaises fades, and as to her child, he so tormented her about it, and the ways of his absurd mother and sisters, and so expected her to sacrifice her art and her prospects to the little wretch, that she was ready to strangle it! "Maternal love, bah! she was not going to be like a bird or a beast," she said, with a strange wild glance in her eyes that made Lance shudder, and think how much more he respected the bird or beast. Then at Chicago, when Wood's own folly and imprudence had brought on an illness that destroyed his voice, and she knew there would be only starvation, or she should have to toil for the whole of them, Schnetterling, manager of a circus, fell in love with her, and made her good offers to sing in Canada, and Chicago was a place where few questions were asked, so she freed herself.