CHAPTER V.

A LUCKY CAST.

The great house lay very still in the evening sunshine that slanted soft and red on its gray old walls and turned its many windows to amber fires, its castellated roof to a rose-red carving against the pale blue eastern sky. Over the great hall door that opened on a wide stone terrace, grim with lions wrought in stone, was carved the motto of the master of the house--“What Marchant held let Marchant hold.”

The words were repulsive and ironical in their pride to the man who looked up at them involuntarily as he got out of his carriage and went into his house. He passed wearily through the hall to his library, and locked the door behind him.

He must have time to think; must be alone. He dreaded the sound of the light knock at the door, which would mean Cristiane had come to see what he had brought her from London. And the motto of his house over his door had been like a blow on the eyes to him to-night.

“What Marchant held let Marchant hold.”

He, Gaspard le Marchant, had learned to-day that a resistless hand was loosening his own grip on the house of his fathers; of his lands and money; of his life itself. But it was not the losing of those things that made his upper lip damp with sweat as he sat alone in the dim, Russia leather scented library.

“Cristiane,” he said to himself very quietly. “Who can I leave with Cristiane?”

His thought was all for his only daughter, the child of his love. Seventeen years old, cherished, adored, beautiful--who would take care of her when he was gone? And go he must, for the great London doctor had told him so that very morning.

“It is a matter of months, Sir Gaspard; perhaps of weeks.”

The words in this hard gentleness seemed to ring still in the ears of the man who sat alone.

“A matter of a very few months, and if you have anything to arrange it would be best, perhaps, to see to it at once.”

Gaspard le Marchant’s voice had been quite quiet as he answered the words that were his death-warrant, but he had gone straight from the doctor’s house and taken the first train home to Marchant Place.

He had not felt really well for a year past, but he had never thought it was serious when he paid that two-days’ visit to London; he had gone up more to buy new clothes than to see a doctor. It had been a cursory visit, and, like many such things, had held the tidings of death in it.

A few weeks more and Gaspard le Marchant would be done with this world, and powerless to care for the child for whom that other Cristiane had given her life seventeen years ago.

At the thought, another thought, that had been in the man’s mind all day, came over him with ineffable power. The doctor had meant that if there was anything he wanted to do before he died he had better do it. Well, there was one thing--call it the whim of a dying man if you liked! He must go once more to that grave where they had laid all that was left of the woman who loved him, seventeen years ago.

He must bury his face in the grass that grew over her body; must tell her that the parting was, after all, not long; the day very close at hand now when he and she would walk together in the paths of paradise.

“I can’t tell the child I’m going to die,” he thought. “And I must find a guardian for her somehow. If I only knew a woman I could trust! God knows the girl must have missed her mother many a day.”

He was the last of the Le Marchants’; he had no relations except a married cousin, of whom he had lost sight long ago, and his wife had had no one.

People said Cristiane’s mother had been an adventuress; certainly she had left her daughter the legacy only of her own outlandish name, her own wonderful red-gold hair, and a wild will that there was no compelling.

Cristiane Luoff her name had been, and Sir Gaspard had married her in Rome. For a year they had been utterly happy--and now he was going to look on her grave for the last time before he died.

First, though, he must find some one to leave with Cristiane, and he had no inkling where to turn. Men he knew--but Cristiane was too pretty to leave to any of them; women--he could not think of one!

He stared idly across the wide oak writing-table before him, and a neat pile of letters caught his eye. Surely he had seen the writing on that top envelope before--but where!

Small, neat, dainty, it lay before his gaze, and he opened it, more to turn his thoughts than because it could have to do with what was in his mind.

“Helen Trelane” it was signed, and he wondered no longer why the writing had looked familiar, though it was years since he had seen it.

Mrs. Trelane was his only relative, and had married a man of whom report spoke variously as a scoundrel and a martyr. Only reports of the first sort had reached Sir Gaspard. Trelane had long been dead, and, living, had had few friends. One thing was certain, that with him Mrs. Trelane had led a life of precarious poverty, till she had gradually drifted utterly away from the people who had known her as Helen le Marchant.

When Trelane drank himself to death--or died of a broken heart, as some people had it--Sir Gaspard had sent a large check to his widow, and she had written more times than were quite necessary to thank him. He had let the correspondence drop, but now he recognized the writing.

“My Dear Gaspard,” the letter ran, “I suppose you will be surprised at hearing from one of whom you have heard nothing since your great kindness at a sad time. I would have written had I had anything pleasant to say, but things have not gone well with me and my little girl.

“An imprudent man of business--I do not care to write a dishonest one--the education of my child, which cost more than I imagined, and perhaps my own foolish ignorance of money matters, have resulted in my being nearly penniless.

“I write to you now as my only relation, to tell you that I must find a situation as governess or companion to support my child, and to ask you if you will be good enough to act as reference to my employers, when I find them.

“If you answer this at once, this address will find me, but if not, please write care May’s Employment Office, for my lease of this house expires at the end of this week, and I do not know yet where I can go.

“You have never seen Ismay. She is sixteen now. I think her pretty, and I know her to be my only comfort. When I find a situation I shall send her back to her school as a pupil teacher, but the parting will be a hard one, and I have not yet found courage to tell her of it.

“However, it must be; and I rely on your old kindness when I ask you to let me refer to you as to my fitness to undertake the charge of girls.

“Your cousin, “HELEN TRELANE.

“1 Colbourne Square, London.”

It was a letter that had given its writer some trouble, but circumstances had rendered it a masterpiece.

Could Helen Trelane have seen Sir Gaspard turn again to the few words in which she spoke sadly of the parting with her daughter she would have smiled in quiet triumph at the inspiration which had made her bait her nearly hopeless hook with love for her child. She had asked for so little, too; and there was nothing to let Sir Gaspard know that she meant him to do for her treble what she asked.

“Poor girl, poor Helen!” he thought. “What a fate to have to earn her own living and be parted from her child. But if she is the woman I think her, I can save her from that--only I must see her first.”

It seemed to Le Marchant that the finger of Providence was in Helen Trelane’s letter. Who would make a better guardian for Cristiane than his own cousin, a mother herself?

She had said something about her ignorance of money matters, but he could leave Cristiane’s money so tied up that there would be no question of managing it.

He wrote a short note, appointing a time to see Mrs. Trelane in London. Somehow his heart had lightened since reading that letter from another Le Marchant, who was pained and desperate about her only child.

As he sealed his note he started, like a child caught in mischief, for there sounded an impatient tap at the door.

It was Cristiane. And he was making plans for her he could not tell her, with his heart full of an agony she must not suspect.

“Are you here, father? May I come in?”

How sweet and full the girl’s voice sounded through the oak door!

The man’s heart fairly turned in his breast as he rose and let her in.

But his handsome face was quite calm as the girl put up her fresh cheek for his kiss; if his lip trembled under his fair mustache she was not woman enough to know it.

“Have you just come back? Why didn’t you let me know, daddy?” she demanded imperiously. “Or were you busy?”--with a careless glance at the newly written note that was to mean so much for her. He nodded.

“Finished now? Tell me, chickabiddy, how did you get on without me?” He could not keep from passing a hand that shook a little over the dear waves of her red-gold hair.

She faced him suddenly.

“You’re tired, daddy; you look pale. We’ll have dinner early.”

“Whenever you like.”

He was looking at her as a man looks at the dearest thing on earth; how fair, how heavenly fair she was as she stood, tall and slim, in her white frock, the last sunset light catching her golden hair; falling on her great dark-gray eyes, which were all but black, or sometimes violet, as her mood varied; making lovely her faintly pink cheek, her rose-red mouth.

It was as though Cristiane Luoff had come back from the dead, in the crown of her youth.

“Oh, you are tired!” the girl cried, as she met his gaze. “You--you look quite plain, daddy! I’ll ring for dinner now.”

Somehow Gaspard le Marchant found strength to laugh at that time-worn joke about his plainness, but the next instant his hard-held composure was nearly out of hand.

“You’ll never go away and leave me again, will you, daddy? I do miss you so horribly.”

“I--I won’t, if I can help it,” said Sir Gaspard, almost sharply.