ANOTHER HALT--CHANGE OF HORSES--AND A TURN ON THE ROAD.
Colonel Morley, on learning that Jasper declined a personal conference
with himself, and that the proposal of an interview with Jasper’s
alleged daughter was equally scouted or put aside, became still more
confirmed in his belief that Jasper had not yet been blest with a
daughter sufficiently artful to produce. And pleased to think that the
sharper was thus unprovided with a means of annoyance, which, skilfully
managed, might have been seriously harassing; and convinced that when
Jasper found no farther notice taken of him, he himself ‘would be
compelled to petition for the terms he now rejected, the Colonel dryly
informed Poole “that his interference was at an end; that if Mr. Losely,
either through himself, or through Mr. Poole, or any one else, presumed
to address Mr. Darrell direct, the offer previously made would be
peremptorily and irrevocably withdrawn. I myself,” added the Colonel,
“shall be going abroad very shortly for the rest of the summer; and
should Mr. Losely, in the mean while, think better of a proposal which
secures him from want, I refer him to Mr. Darrell’s solicitor. To that
proposal, according to your account of his destitution, he must come
sooner or later; and I am glad to see that he has in yourself so
judicious an adviser”--a compliment which by no means consoled the
miserable Poole.
In the briefest words, Alban informed Darrell of his persuasion that
Jasper was not only without evidence to support a daughter’s claim,
but that the daughter herself was still in that part of Virgil’s Hades
appropriated to souls that have not yet appeared upon the upper earth;
and that Jasper himself, although holding back, as might be naturally
expected, in the hope of conditions more to his taste, had only to be
left quietly to his own meditations in order to recognise the advantages
of emigration. Another L100 a-year or so, it is true, he might bargain
for, and such a demand might be worth conceding. But, on the whole,
Alban congratulated Darrell upon the probability of hearing very little
more of the son-in-law, and no more at all of the son-in-law’s daughter.
Darrell made no comment nor reply. A grateful look, a warm pressure of
the hand, and, when the subject was changed, a clearer brow and livelier
smile, thanked the English Alban better than all words.