The Reluctant Widow Read Online Free Page A

dissipation, or to influence him in any way for the better. I only succeeded in giving him a profound dislike of me. I cannot blame him: his dislike of me can be nothing compared with the sentiments I have always cherished in regard to him.” He looked across the table at her, and added with deliberation, “It is not an easy task to deal fairly with a youth for whom you can feel nothing but contempt and dislike, ma’am. One of my cousin’s uncles would tell you that I was always hard on him. It may have been so: I; did not mean to be. When I was obliged to remove him from Eton, I put him in charge of an excellent tutor. It did not answer. A great noise was made over my refusal to entertain the notion of letting him go to Oxford. There was, in fact, little likelihood of his proving himself eligible, but on every count I should have opposed it. I was held, however, to have acted from spite.” “I wonder you should have listened to such ill-natured nonsense!” Miss Rochdale observed, quite hotly.
    “I did not. After various vicissitudes, the boy took up a fancy to enter the Army. I thought if he could be removed from the society that was ruining him there might be some hope of his achieving respectability, so I bought him a pair of colors. I was instantly held to nourish designs on his inheritance and to have chosen this way of putting a period to his existence. Happily for my reputation, he was asked to send in his papers before he had seen any active service. By that time he was of age, and my responsibility had come to an end.” “I am astonished you should not have washed your hands of him!”
    “To a great extent I did, but as his interpretation of our relationship included a belief that he was at liberty not only to pledge my credit, but to attach my signature to various bills, it was a trifle difficult to ignore him.”
    She was very much shocked. “And his paternal relatives blame you! Upon my word, it is too bad!”
    “Yes, it becomes a little wearisome,” he acknowledged. “I blame myself for having lent a certain amount of color to their suspicions by once taking up a mortgage on part of the unencumbered land.
    I really meant it for the best, but I should have known better than to have done it. Were he to die now, and his property to come into my hands, it would be freely said in certain quarters that I had not only encouraged him to commit all the excesses that led to his end, but had, by some unspecified means, prevented him from marrying.”
    “I own it is very disagreeable for you,” she said, “but I am persuaded your own family, your friends, would not believe such slander!”
    “By no means.”
    “You should not allow yourself to regard it.”
    “No, perhaps I should not, if I had only myself to consider. But such whisperings can be extremely mischievous. My brother John, for instance, might find them embarrassing, and I have no desire to throw any rub, however unwitting, in his way. And Nicky—no, Nicky would never bear to hear me slandered!” He broke off, as though recollecting that he was addressing a stranger, and said abruptly, “The simplest way to put a stop to all this nonsense is to provide my cousin with a wife, and that is what I am determined to do.” “But I do not properly understand, sir! If, as you say, your cousin dislikes you, why should he not himself look about him for a wife? He cannot wish you to inherit his possessions!” “Not at all. But not all the representations of his doctor have been enough to convince him that his life is not worth the purchase of a guinea. He considers that there is time and to spare before he need burden himself with a wife.”
    “If this is so, how have you been able to persuade him to be married to some unknown female whom, I collect, you have found for him through advertisement? It must be preposterous!”
    “I have said that I will meet his present debts if he does so.”
    She regarded him with some shrewdness. “But he would