England -- Fiction; Gothic fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction
His subsequent interview with Mr. Longcluse, in presence of David Arden,
was simply a concerted piece of acting, on which Longcluse, when he had
made his terms with Davies, insisted, as a security against the
re-opening of the extortion.
Nothing will induce Alice to accept one farthing of Longcluse's
magnificent legacy. Secretly Uncle David is resolved to make it up to
her from his own wealth, which is very great.
Richard Arden's story is not known to any living person but the Jew
Levi, and vaguely to his sister, in whose mind it remains as something
horrible, but never approached.
Levi keeps the secret for reasons more cogent than charitable. First he
kept it to himself as a future instrument of profit. But on his
insinuating something that promised such relations to Sir Richard, the
young gentleman met it with so bold a front, with fury so unaffected,
and with threats so alarming, founded upon a trifling matter of which
the Jew had never suspected his knowledge, that Mr. Levi has not
ventured either to "utilise" his knowledge, in a profitable way, or
afterwards to circulate the story for the solace of his malice. They
seem, in Mr. Rooke's phrase, to have turned their backs on one another;
and as some years have passed, and lapse of time does not improve the
case of a person in Mr. Levi's position, we may safely assume that he
will never dare to circulate any definite stories to Sir Richard's
prejudice. A sufficient motive, indeed, for doing so exists no longer,
for Sir Richard, who had lived an unsettled life travelling on the
Continent, and still playing at foreign tables when he could afford it,
died suddenly at Florence in the autumn of '69.
Vivian Darnley has been in "the House," now, nearly four years. Uncle
David is very proud of him; and more impartial people think that he
will, at last, take an honourable place in that assembly. His last
speech has been spoken of everywhere with applause. David Arden's
immensely increased wealth enables him to entertain very magnificent
plans for this young man. He intends that he shall take the name of
Arden, and earn the transmission of the title, or the distinction of a
greater one.
A year ago Vivian Darnley married Alice Arden, and no two people can be
happier.
Lady May, although her girlish ways have not forsaken her, has no
present thoughts of making any man happy. She had a great cry all to
herself when Sir Richard died, and she now persuades herself that he
never meant one word he said of her, and that if the truth were known,
although after that day she never spoke to him more, he had never really
cared for more than one woman on earth. It was all spite of that odious
Lady Wynderbroke!
Alice has never seen Mortlake since the night of her flight from its
walls.
The two old servants, Crozier and Martha Tansey, whose acquaintance we
made in that suburban seat of the Ardens, are both, I am glad to say,
living still, and extremely comfortable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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