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Updated: May 7, 2025
Smithson, the housekeeper, who was ready to declare that no living creature, except the members of the household, could have been within the castle walls on the night of Gertrude Eversleigh's disappearance.
Sir Oswald Eversleigh's carriage was at the door of the "Star" at noon; and at ten minutes after twelve the baronet was on his way back to town. He visited a great many West-end boarding-schools before he found one that satisfied him in every particular. Had his protegee been his daughter, or his affianced wife, he could not have been more difficult to please.
"And you wonder, no doubt, to hear of such a childhood from the lips of Sir Oswald Eversleigh's widow. One day I heard a neighbour reproaching the man with his cruel treatment of me. 'It is bad enough to have stolen the child, he said; 'you shouldn't beat her as well. From that hour I knew that I was a stolen child.
He could read Sir Oswald Eversleigh's valet as he could have read an open book He saw that the man was weak, irresolute, tolerably honest, but open to temptation. He was a middle-aged man, with sandy hair, a pale face, and light, greenish-gray eyes. "Weak," thought the surgeon, as he examined this man's countenance, "greedy, and avaricious. So, so; we can do what we like with Mr. Millard."
Gilbert Ashburne and the lawyer examined the rest of the packet. There were no papers of importance; nothing throwing any light upon late events, except Lady Eversleigh's letter, and the will made by the baronet immediately after his marriage. "There is another and a later will," said Reginald, eagerly; "a will made last night, and witnessed by Millard and Peterson.
With pretty imperiousness she bore down Lady Eversleigh's grateful scruples, and the result was, that the two started that same evening, travelled as fast as post-horses could carry them, and arrived at Allanbay before even Lady Eversleigh's impatience could find the journey long. Susan Jernam had kept the child with her, and she it was who put little Gerty into her mother's arms.
Larkspur was hors de combat just at the time when his acuteness would have found most employment, and thus Lady Eversleigh's project of vengeance received, unconsciously, the first check. The game of reprisals was, indeed, destined to be played, but not by her; Providence would do that, in time, in the long run. Meanwhile, she strove, after her own fashion, to become the executor of its decrees.
The disinherited son reformed his life very soon after the breach between himself and his father, and was lucky enough to win the affections of Sir Oswald Eversleigh's sister. But he was too proud to ask for his father's forgiveness, and the father died a year after Douglas Dale's birth never having seen Mrs. Dale or his grandchildren.
A bitter experience of vice and folly had robbed Reginald Eversleigh's heart and mind of all youth's freshness and confidence, and for him this woman seemed only what she was, an adventuress, dangerous to all who approached her. He knew this, and yet he yielded to the fascination of her presence. Night after night he haunted the rooms in the Rue du Faubourg, St. Honore.
She, the woman whose beauty had been used to lure Valentine Jernam to his death, she who had almost witnessed his murder; she owed to Valentine's brother the discovery of her parentage, the defeat of her calumniators, her restoration to a high place in society, and to family ties, the destruction of Reginald Eversleigh's designs on Lady Verner's property, and greatest, best boon of all the recovery of her child.
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