The Grey Monk. T. W. Speight

       CHAPTER III.

      ALEC'S PROPOSITION.

      With the inmates of Withington Chase two uneventful years glided imperceptibly away. Between Sir Gilbert and his wife the name of the proscribed heir was never mentioned; to all seeming he had vanished out of their lives as completely as if he had never existed. That his image still dwelt more or less in his father's thoughts was only in the natural order of things, but to faithful Mr. Page alone, from whom the baronet had few or no secrets, did Alec's name ever cross his lips, and to him no oftener than was unavoidable.

      The lawyer had duly remitted his quarterly allowance to the young man, forwarding it now to one obscure continental town and now to another, in accordance with Alec's written request; but, beyond that, nothing whatever was known of him or his whereabouts.

      Then one day the baronet received a letter from his son, dated from Catanzaro, a small out-of-the-way town in southern Italy.

      In it the writer stated that he was utterly tired of the idle, purposeless life he had been leading for the past two years, and that if his father would agree to give him six thousand pounds down, he would emigrate to the United States and never trouble him for another shilling as long as he lived. But he would do more, much more, than that, should his father consent to his proposition. In that case he would agree to the cutting off of the entail and would sign whatever documents might be needful for the due carrying out of that design. Sir Gilbert sat staring at the letter after he had finished reading it like a man whose faculties had been paralysed by sheer amazement.

      So absorbed was his attention that he was unconscious of the door behind him being opened and of the entry of his wife. Her footfalls made no noise on the thick carpet. She went up behind him and was on the point of placing a hand on his shoulder, when her gaze vas attracted to the letter which lay spread open on the writing-table in front of him.

      Lady Clare was more than a score of years younger than her husband and her eyesight was still as keen as ever it had been. Half-a-dozen seconds sufficed her to take in the sense of Alec's letter, the handwriting of which she had at once recognised. A little gasp escaped her before she knew it. An instant later the baronet had started to his feet, and was confronting her with flaming eyes; involuntarily his hand closed over the letter.

      "Madam, I am not in the habit of being startled in this way," he said, "nor do I like it."

      "On the contrary, dear, it was you who startled me," she replied in her blandest accents, with a hand pressed to her left side. "Of course I naturally supposed that you had heard the door opened and shut, and was on the point of addressing you when you started up as if you had been shot."

      "Humph! I have had occasion before to-day to beg of you not to be quite so feline in your movements," he answered with something like a snarl. "Did you--did you read any portion of the letter that was on the table in front of me?"

      "My dear Gilbert, what do you take me for! That there was a letter there, I am aware, but as for reading as much as a line of it----"

      "There, there, that will do. Just ring the bell, will you, and then tell me what you want to see me about."

      When the servant came in response to the summons, he said: "Tell Graves to bring the dog-cart round at once."

      Ten minutes later saw Sir Gilbert on his way to Mapleford with his son's letter in his pocket. In such a contingency he felt that he could not do better than seek the advice of his valued counsellor.

      Mr. Page, a tall, lanky, somewhat loose-jointed man, with a long thin face, a prominent nose and an expression that was a curious compound of hard common sense, shrewdness and good-nature, gave vent to a low whistle when he had come to the end of Alec's epistle.

      "What an exceedingly foolish young man!" were his first words.

      "Why so, pray--why so?" demanded the baronet with a lifting of his eyebrows.

      "To offer to sell his birthright for a mess of pottage--for that is what he here proposes to do."

      "Six thousand pounds is a large sum, Page."

      "In itself it may perhaps seem so, but what is it in comparison with the reversion of Withington Chase and the other entailed property? Why, it's not equivalent to one year's rent-roll! A very foolish young man!"

      "It is to be presumed that he knows his own business best," remarked the baronet drily. "Besides, you seem to forget the many hundreds of pounds--nay, I may say thousands--that I have had to disburse at different times by reason of his extravagance."

      The lawyer shook his head.

      "There's more under the surface, I feel convinced, than either you or I yet know of." Then, after a pause, during which he seemed lost in thought, he added, "I should not be in the least surprised if a woman were at the bottom of this business."

      The baronet was startled.

      "That is a possibility which did not suggest itself to me," he said. "It would, indeed, be just like Alec to finish up his career by contracting a low marriage." Then with a shrug he added: "But he can please himself about that when once the proposition embodied by him in his letter has been duly carried into effect."

      "Then you really mean to accept his offer to cut off the entail?"

      "I do. If I had any hesitation before, your last suggestion would have effectually disposed of it. I am certainly inclined to believe that you have hit upon the real reason which underlies his offer. Well, I am glad he has sufficient sense and good-feeling left to betake himself to a country where there's not a creature who knows him. In that case a mésalliance on his part will be a matter of very minor consequence. And now let us consider by what means we can most readily lay our hands on six thousand pounds."

      A week later Sir Gilbert and Mr. Page set out for Italy.

      It had never been the baronet's practice to take his wife into his confidence about matters which, from his point of view, did not concern her, consequently he had kept his own counsel as far as Alec's letter and its contents were concerned. It would be time enough to tell her after the all-important document should have been signed by which Alec renounced his birthright. He began to regard young Randolph, the present Lady Clare's eldest son, with very different eyes from those with which he had hitherto looked upon the boy. A few more days and he would be the heir of Withington. The pity of it was that the title could not descend to him as well as the estates. That was a point as to which the law was manifestly to blame.

      Lady Clare betrayed not the slightest interest as to the nature of the business which was taking her husband and Mr. Page all the way to Italy. So well did she play her part that no faintest suspicion entered Sir Gilbert's mind that she had any knowledge of the existence of Alec's letter, much less of the nature of its contents. She judged, and rightly, that her husband would not have been at the trouble to go to Italy and take his lawyer with him, unless he had agreed to accept the terms proposed by his eldest son. After all, then, the one great grievance of her life would cease to exist, and her darling Randolph would become his father's heir, as he ought to have been all along! Only herself knew with what eager anxiety she awaited her husband's return. Surely, surely, he would not be so cruel as to keep the good news from her an hour after it should be his to tell! He could not fail to know how happy it would make her.

      The theory propounded by Mr. Page as to the motive which lay at the foundation of Alec's letter to his father, was not very wide of the mark. Had it not been for a certain pair of brilliant black eyes, in all probability it would never have been written.

      About six months before, in the course of his aimless wanderings Alec had found himself and his very limited luggage at Catanzaro, a small but romantically situated Calabrian town, a few miles inland from the Gulf of Squillace.

      The place had pleased