LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 908, 23 May 1877, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE CHARM,

( Continued.)

Terosifca sat silent, tranquilly occupied over the strip of hemming she had taken up aga uat the t >ble Even her face was passive. But Louise was full of questions. ' Tell me about the Anthonys, Mr Jermyn. Is it a large family ? I only knew there were two young children.' ' Yes, there are the two children and two grown-up daughters, though I don't know whether the second calls herself ' out,' and two sons.'

' Sons I Are they grown up ?' ' They are the eldest of all. One of them, George, is in the army : Robert is an engi neer.' As he paused a moment, a red streak again flushed his brow. ' Handsome, gentlemanly fellows both of them,' he concluded in a firm, decided tone.

Still Teresita sewed tranquilly and silently; but Louise's keen glance swept from one to another, reading each of them, she th ught. Jermyn was restless and moody ; now standing at the window, looking out on the star-lit evening, now leaving it to pace the room. All his gracious gaiety of manner had foisaken him.

'How soon do you leave? -and go?' he aaked.

'The beginning of next month—June,' Louise answered, with a sad note in her voice, glancing towards the garden wherenext month would ilnd her roses all in bloom.

' And the old house. What is t® become of it?

'We know nothing. Only that we shall leave it for ever.'

He stamped his foot impatiently. ' And it ought to be yours, every rood of it ! And Eastburn ought to be yours ; and the whole Freer estates ! There never was so unjust a will made since the world began !' ' Rut it is a very common thing for a father to disinherit a child who marries against his wish,' said Louise calmly. Jermyn laughed a short bitter laugh. ' Common it may be where there is sufficient cause ; but why should your proud Grand father Freer make so uureasonable an opposition to a Van Dest ?' A faint smile flickered across Teresita's lips and died in a sigb. But Louise answered as coolly as ever. Her temperament was so perfectly equable. ' You forget, Mr Jermyn : it was not a matter of pride. The Van Dests were as good a family as the Freer'-.' 'I should think so,' ejaculated Jermyn with swift emphaais.

Louisa paid no heed to this ; but again there flickered across Teresita's lips that curious, faint smile.

'As good a family as the Freers,' added Louise. 'Though he, my father, had no wealth, you know, to carry out the Freer magnificence to which my mother had been accustomed. Hut it was not the poverty that influenced my grandfather : he had no moneyed ambition for his children, for he felt himself—and indeed he was—something of a prince, with the great Freer estates ot those days. But there was the old feud, you know, which had been transmitted from father to son, and he hated and dis trusted all that branch of the Van Dest family. And directly after my mother's marriage he made this will, in his an^ei - , disinheriting her. Grandmamma said he did not make another will, revoking the first, and the lawyers con'irmed it. But you know all this. No other will was found ;it was supposed he repented of it afterwards and destroyed it, retaining only the former one, by Avhich ' ' By which you are wronged !' interposed Jermyn fiercely. He stopped suddenly here in his walk. ' Louise, with all this oh. story haun'ing your mind so closely, did never a suspicion of foul play suggest itself to you ?' ' Miss Van Dest's quiet face relaxed into a half-amused, a half-derisive smile. There had been suspicions of it, she said, chieliy entertained by good old Rachel, her grandmamma's maid. Not by anyone else, that she knew of ; such suspicions were too fanciful and absurd for common daylight; in the nineteenth century people did not destroy wills -except in novels.

'1 wonder where the lost will was deposited, mused Jermyn.

'ln this house. Grandmamma sa : d so. F«i'husband brought it home himself from the lawyers, and locked it up. And there was no one here t * play false ; only himself, grandmamma, and Aunt Joan—besides the servants.' ' Where were the Fords then ?'

' Where they are now —at their own place in Devonshire. You must remember that nobody, save the lawyer, Mr Hrake, knew that the Fords were as much as mentioned in the will. They did not know it; grandmamma did not.'

' You do believe then, Louise, that Mr Freer destroyed the later will himself ? ' ' Certainly I do. Grandpapa had a most perverse and unreliable temper.' ' An?! the effect of this perversity falls upon you And those Ford cousins, with none of the Freer open handedness and all the Freer cold-bloodedness, profit by it!' 'We want nothing that is not ours—we want nothing of the Fords!' exclaimed Louise.

' Bnt it is yours ; an equal portion of the Freer property is yours by every law of justice ; and if the Fords had h< en honourable, highminded people, they would have at once righted the great wrong that had been done you.' ' William Jermyn, you are chimerical. The Fords have done as the world generally does—no worse, no better.'

Bising as she spoke, Miss Van Dest proceeded to put her sewing away. The young man knew it was his signal that his evening with them was at an end and he must be going. ' I have been asking your sifter whether T could be allowed to stand between you and his degradation of going out to the Anthonys. Can it be, Teresita ?' He stood before her, speaking in a low tone. Louise was over at the work table by the door, and did not see or bear. Therese looked up at him, half startled—but her face regained its impassiveness at once, and she answered coldly and calmly. ' No. Thank you : but—no.' ' Good Dight, Teresita.' r 7V> be continvfld.~\