CHAPTER XIII.

HER HOUR OF TRIUMPH.

The solemn memorial service in the parish church for Gaspard le Marchant was over. Mr. Bolton had come away from it a puzzled man. Helen Trelane and her daughter had sat facing him while the rector read, and there was no triumph on either of their faces; only a strained something that might have been despair.

Could he have been too hasty? Did Helen Trelane know nothing of that will, whose distasteful pages he must presently read aloud?

Cristiane puzzled him, too. Why had she not had her father’s body brought home to rest in peace with his kith and kin? Under her black veil he saw that she sobbed pitifully, and saw, too, that her hand throughout the service was fast in Ismay Trelane’s. Could he have wronged them, mother and daughter?

The old man coughed irritably as he sat in the library at Marchant’s Hold, where Sir Gaspard had written that fateful letter to Helen Trelane. Miles Cylmer, who sat there, too, as Sir Gaspard’s old friend had a right, rose suddenly and aroused the old lawyer from his thoughts.

The library door was opening; the hour had come for Cristiane le Marchant; from now, good or bad, gentlewoman or adventuress, Helen Trelane held her fate to mold at her will.

And Cristiane came in first, slowly, reluctantly, as if to hear the wishes of her father, who had been her all, cut her to the heart, now that she would hear his voice no more. Ismay, her head held high as she saw Miles Cylmer without seeming even to let her eyes rest on his face, followed close behind. Last came the woman whom both the men standing up to receive distrusted and despised.

Calm, pale, handsome, Mrs. Trelane swept in, and read nothing friendly in those waiting faces.

Well, they would read the will! And then there would be the world to face again for Helen Trelane.

There was not even a flicker of her lowered eyelids as she sat down. There would be no use in begging for mercy from men like these. She was ready for dismissal, as a man who has lost all is ready for death. Mr. Bolton, anxious to get his work over and be done, opened the envelope containing the two foolscap pages that Gaspard le Marchant had never signed. As he read, the silence of death was in the room.

The world was going round dizzily to Mrs. Trelane as she listened.

She, who sat there sick and hopeless, without a penny, was to have the sole guardianship of Cristiane till she was twenty-one; was to be allowed five hundred pounds a year for her life, to be shared with her daughter; was--her heart fairly turned over in her breast as the next clause came out--to be sole inheritrix if Cristiane were to die unmarried, or without children, and in that case everything would be Ismay’s in the end.

She tried to speak, but there was only a queer little sound in her throat; and opposite her, in her pride and triumph, sat Miles Cylmer, who last night had insulted her when she was in despair. A hand of steel clutched her arm at the thought.

“Don’t look like that!” Ismay’s furious whisper was low in her ear, as the lawyer went on reading unimportant clauses as to legacies to old servants. “Play your game! Be careful!”

No one else heard the words, or knew even that the girl had spoken. Mrs. Trelane, with the paleness of death on her face, sat without moving, as quiet and apparently as calm as when she entered the room. Yet her heart was beating madly.

“Safety, luxury, power!” it pounded in her ear. “Yours, all yours. A dead past, a living present! No more duns, no more striving.” In sheer terror, lest she should scream aloud in her joyful relief, lest it should be written on her face that Gaspard le Marchant was no more to her than a dead dog, Ismay tightened her warning hand till sheer pain brought her mother to her senses.

Once more the girl’s wits had been her salvation. As the lawyer finished the short will and sat looking quietly at the neat sheets, wherein he and Miles Cylmer were executors with the woman whose past they knew, Mrs. Trelane rose to her feet. Her ghastly pallor, her statuesque quiet, were magnificent as she faced them, only her eyes were not on theirs. “Cristiane,” she said very gently, “this has surprised me, and you, too! If you do not want me to live here and try to make you happy, say so. And Mr. Bolton can perhaps make some other arrangement.”

Both men gasped stupidly in their amazement. The lawyer’s distrust of her was already shaken--it vanished utterly at her words. Cylmer could have killed her for daring to speak and propose what she knew could not be done. And yet, as his eyes fell on Ismay, he could not help feeling relief at the knowledge that she was not to be turned out as she had foreseen.

In the silence Cristiane spoke between her sobs.

“No, no! Daddy wished it,” she cried out. “Oh, don’t go! I have no one else, and I--I’m so lonely.”

She crossed swiftly to where the elder woman stood waiting, and flung her arms round her neck, where she stood faintly redolent of the peach-blossom which had sickened Miles Cylmer as she entered.

“You won’t leave me! I would die without you and Ismay! Ismay, who is like my sister already.” Cristiane pleaded imploringly, and at the sight of her young innocence, as she clung to the woman, it was not in human nature that either of the men who looked on should repress a start. Cylmer kept down a furious word, somehow, but he could not keep from making a long step toward Cristiane, even though he knew he had no right to tear her from the woman she clasped so closely.

Yet some one else was more sick than he at the sight, though Helen Trelane was her own mother. A touch gentle as velvet, more compelling than steel, somehow had drawn Cristiane a yard away.

“Hush, dear!” Ismay said softly. “Everything shall be as you say. But let Mr. Bolton talk a little to mother.”

She did not hold the girl; her touch was scarcely more innocent of evil than her mother’s; and at the sharp flash of gratitude in Miles Cylmer’s eyes her own were lowered angrily.

“I suppose the will stands!” Mrs. Trelane was saying gently.

“H’m! Yes--yes--of course!” Mr. Bolton returned. “If Cristiane did not approve I suppose it could be put in chancery and guardians appointed”--in his heart knowing it impossible.

“But I do approve!” Cristiane cried imperiously. “It is what daddy wanted, and what I wish, too. I will not have his will questioned in courts.”

All the wilfulness she had from her mother awoke in her; she looked at the old lawyer with cried-out eyes that yet were steady.

“You are sure, Cristiane?” Cylmer said sternly.

“Sure!”--with a flash of her spirit.

“You hear her?” Mrs. Trelane, gentle still, spoke to Mr. Bolton. “You know that I stay, by her wish, not my own.”

“By her wish!” he returned mechanically.

“And the will!” Miles Cylmer murmured sarcastically, knowing she was safe in her magnanimity, her self-forgetfulness, since no court in England would doubt that clear will.

“Then I will stay.” With a little sigh, as if she had been seeking the right path, and at last found it, Mrs. Trelane moved nearer to Cristiane; not very near, for somehow Ismay stood between them, her eyes, that only her mother could see, blazing green with warning.

She lowered them as her mother stood back, and was no longer between her mother and the two men, and so did not see Mrs. Trelane for the first time look full at Miles Cylmer.

She had reason, since last evening, to hate him, yet it was not her dislike that made him grow so pale.

The merciless triumph in her hard blue eyes, whence a veil seemed to have been lifted, the cold derision which said plainly, “Where are your threats now?” troubled him more than the undying enmity that he saw on her face. What would come to Cristiane in the hands of a woman like this, who could act gentleness and magnanimity at one minute, and the next show the true colors of an adventuress who has outwitted her enemy?

Would she use her power to forbid him the house? Very likely, after last night’s mad attempt to stay the tide of fate with a straw!

“She will have her work cut out to do it,” he reflected, the muscles round his mouth very set and grim. He moved quickly toward Cristiane.

“You will let me come and see you sometimes,” he said very low, “even now that you have new friends?”

For he was sore and smarting that the girl who knew he loved her, who had known him all her life, had never even given him a look since she entered the room.

She looked at him now indifferently.

“If you care to come over, please do”--her voice quite cold and level.

“You will let me do anything I can for you--you know I am always at your service.”

Cristiane’s lip curled, ever so faintly. If he were always at her service, why had he never come, never written, when the dreadful news was known? The new friends that he grudged her were more faithful than the old, very surely! When she had wanted comfort it was not Miles Cylmer who had given it.

“I don’t think I want anything now,” she said proudly, never dreaming of how he had tried to do his best for her. “But, of course, come when you please.”

She went quietly forward to speak to Mr. Bolton, and for a moment Cylmer stood silent, sick at heart, though he had made his point, and the door of Marchant’s Hold was not shut to him. Ismay’s eyes were deep and green as she watched his face; he had made a point for her, too.

“He will come to see Cristiane,” she thought triumphantly; “he shall stay to see me!” She had no longer any fear lest her mother should be connected in his mind with that missing photograph. She was too different in her decorous black from the white-gowned, bare-armed woman of the picture.

She beckoned Cylmer close to her with a little backward motion of her head. “Make it up with mother,” she said under her breath, Cylmer’s broad shoulders shielding her from the others. “She will never really forgive you, but she will pretend to.”

Cylmer nodded.

“And you?” he said uncomfortably.

Ismay’s eyes met his, and for once they were true.

“I am going to take care of Cristiane.” She little knew of all she meant when she spoke; of the days of watching, the nights of fear; but long after Miles Cylmer, remembering this day, knew that in her fashion she had kept her word.