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Updated: May 25, 2025
Drane's informant also wrote that it had always been the impression with the people of Lawsonville that Mary Hollis had not been legally married to Abner's father, but that she had been entrapped into a form of marriage with John Logan at a time when he had a wife still living.
James Drane was often at Oaklands, and Abner, aware of this, while he, Betsy's betrothed husband, was prohibited from visiting her, grew more and more moody and impatient, and sometimes in his despondency he pictured the girl as listening with growing interest to Drane's entertaining talk, and yielding more and more to his fascination.
Moreover, there was something, she could not tell exactly what, about Miss Panney's words and manner, which put an unsatisfactory aspect upon the obvious methods of Cicely's communications with her employer. Mrs. Drane's mind had already been slightly disturbed on this subject, but Miss Panney had revived and greatly increased the disturbance.
Abner was thoroughly convinced that the statement in Drane's letter, concerning Mary's death, was false. He had full confidence in Richard Dudley's clear-sightedness and uprightness. Moreover, his own intuition and his faint recollection of episodes in his own early life made him sure that his mother had died that August night in the stockade fortress of Bryan Station.
The shiny, mahogany-coloured spaniel, prescient of siesta, leaped to her side and lay down with his chin on her lap and blinked his yellow eyes. She lay back on the seat, her hand on the dog's head, looking contentedly at the opposite wilderness of bloom and the glimpses, through the screen of trees and shrubs, of the sunlit stretches of park beyond. She loved Drane's Court.
To say that Hiram Gilcrest was amazed at the story which the lawyer related would but feebly express his state of mind. "If our suspicions are correct," he said when he had thought over Drane's story, "as to the date of this woman's death, and if this son of hers is illegitimate, he has no rights at all, under the provisions of this will, to the Hite estates.
Then Christmas came and lie found himself at Drane's Court, somewhat gasping for breath. A large houseparty, however, including Lord Francis Ayres, the chief Opposition Whip, threatened to keep him busy. The Princess drove over from Chetwood Park for dinner on Christmas Day. He had to worship from afar; for a long spell of the evening to worship with horrible jealousy.
And so Paul told her of all his life, of Bludston, of Barney Bill, of the model days, of the theatre, of Jane, of his father; and he showed her the cornelian heart and expounded its significance; and he talked of his dearest lady, Miss Winwood, and his work on the Young England League, and his failure to grip in this disastrous election, and he went back to the brickfield and his flight from the Life School, and his obsessing dream of romantic parentage and the pawning of his watch at Drane's Court; and in the full tide of it all a perturbed butler appeared at the door.
In his long life of eighteen months he had seen many people, postmen and butcher boys and casual diggers in kitchen gardens, whose apparent permit to exist in Drane's Court had been an insoluble puzzle; but never had he seen so outrageous a trespasser. With unparalleled moral courage he told him exactly what he thought of him. But the trespasser did not hear. He kept on advancing.
Drane intended now to get up sooner in the morning, but she did not do it; and she resolved that she would not drop asleep in her chair early in the evening, as she had felt perfectly free to do when Miriam was with them; but she calmly dozed all the same. There was another obstacle to Mrs. Drane's good intentions, of which she knew nothing.
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