CHAPTER 14 AN EVIL GENIUS
It was not until the funeral was over and my lord’s last will and testament had been read that Lady Elaine Seabright was brought to a knowledge of her true position.
She had many sympathizing friends, and the new earl and lord of the domain kindly offered to leave the house and effects at her disposal for any reasonable length of time.
“Indeed,” he added, magnanimously, “with the consent of my wife and daughters, I may offer you a home here until the viscount claims you. The late earl and I were not good friends simply because he had no son and I was his natural heir.”
Elaine thanked her cousin, but told him that what he had proposed was impossible.
The old family lawyer was thoroughly indignant, and muttered threats about contesting the last will; but what could he do in face of a dozen witnesses, who were all convinced that the earl’s mind had been clear to the last? Besides, Lady Elaine would never have consented to such a course of action.
“Even if you cared for this man—this Viscount Rivington—the will places you in a most humiliating position, my lady,” he told her, indignantly. “By what I gather, it was made really in the heat of anger, notwithstanding the fact that the earl was dying. You had resolutely declined to encourage the advances of Rivington that very morning and my lord was determined that he should be your husband. In an apparently easy-going[Pg 100] way your father was a perfect martinet. He generally had his own way, even if he waited long years for the opportunity. And then why should the original executors be struck out—myself and Colonel Greyson?”
Mr. Worboys snorted angrily, and stamped to and fro across the floor of the library, where he had come at Lady Elaine’s bidding, so that she might learn her true position.
“There is no doubt at all that you have been treated badly by Sir Harold Annesley,” he went on, but Lady Elaine interrupted him.
“Please do not speak of Sir Harold,” she said. “My heart tells me that he will come back to me some day.”
“Well, my lady,” proceeded Mr. Worboys, “it amounts to this: If you refuse to wed Viscount Rivington you will lose a fortune of nearly half-a-million sterling and an income of ten or twelve thousand a year.”
“I have my private fortune,” she reminded him.
“A paltry five hundred a year,” he told her, “and even that is under the control of your guardians until you are of age.”
“It appears that I am practically bound hand and foot,” she said, bitterly. “Must I submit to these people?”
She stood erect, with flashing eyes, and deathly-white face—a pathetic figure in her loneliness.
“Cannot you help me, Mr. Worboys?”
“The law will not permit of my interference, my lady. Now, look at matters on their brightest side. Within one year you will be of age and your own mistress. You are determined to lose your fortune rather than marry Viscount Rivington. No one can legally force you into this marriage, and if undue pressure is brought to bear upon you, then I may be able to step in to your assistance. What manner of woman is this Lady Gaynor?”
“I do not like her,” Elaine replied. “I do not know[Pg 101] why, but we were never upon friendly terms. Had my father lived I believe that he would have made Lady Gaynor the Countess of Seabright.”
