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During this halcyon period, in which Mr. Hawkehurst cultivated alternately the society of the Muses and his mistress, he saw little or nothing of George Sheldon. He had washed his hands of all share in the work of establishing Charlotte Halliday's claim to the Reverend John Haygarth's thousands.
"And will Charlotte know will she know that I have been concerned in this business?" asked Valentine, growing very pale all of sudden. He was thinking how mean he must appear in Miss Halliday's eyes, if she came to understand that he had known her to be John Haygarth's heiress at the time he won from her the sweet confession of her love.
But it always has been a habit with the Captain to leave one loose glove behind him; and I daresay it was the recollection of this which suggested the idea of his interference in the Goodge business. I devoted my evening to the perusal of Mrs. Rebecca Haygarth's letters.
"I hold every link of the chain of evidence, without which Miss Halliday might as well be a native of the Fiji islands for any claim she can assert to John Haygarth's estate. I am prepared to carry this matter through; but I will only do it on the condition that I receive half the fortune recovered from the Crown by Miss Halliday." "A very moderate demand, upon my word!"
Providence had given him more than he had ever dared to hope; not John Haygarth's thousands; not a life of luxurious idleness, and dinner-giving, and Derby days, and boxes on the grand tier, and carriage-horses at five hundred guineas a pair; not a palace in Belgravia, and a shooting-box in the Highlands, and a villa at Cowes; not these things, in which he would once have perceived the summum bonum; but a fair price for his labour, a dear young wife, a tranquil home.
Nor could any such action invalidate the marriage solemnized that morning; and that one fact comprised his utter ruin. Charlotte's interests were merged in the interests of her husband. No shadow of claim upon John Haygarth's wealth remained to him. His ruin was complete and dire.
"It mayn't be such a very bad chance as you seem to think it, my friend," George replied, with some indignation. "Whenever the Reverend John Haygarth's estate drops in, I stand to win fifty thousand pounds. And that's not so bad for a start in life, I suppose you haven't forgotten that your wife is heir-at-law to a hundred thousand pounds?"
He felt and knew that love like this was a treasure beside which the Reverend John Haygarth's hoarded thousands must needs seem but sorry dross. After this there was much explanation and congratulation. Gustave Lenoble was delighted to claim so fair a kinswoman.
The interval that had elapsed since his return had been spent by the Captain in his own bedchamber, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the folding-doors between that apartment and the parlour. He had heard just enough of the conversation to know that Gustave had been rejected Gustave, with Cotenoir and a handsome independence in the present, and the late John Haygarth's fortune in the future.
"To begin: we must find legal evidence of this Matthew Haygarth's marriage to the mother of this child C., who came afterwards to marry the man Meynell; and after we will go to Susan Meynell. Her box came from Rouen that we know. Where her box came from she is likely to have come from. So it is at Rouen, or near Rouen, we must look for her. Let me see: she die in 1835! that is long time.
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