Part 45

Harry, having made but a pretence of breakfasting, pushed away his plate. "I'll smoke if you don't mind. You go on eating," he said. "Do you remember a little talk we had about our friend Duplay? We agreed that we should both like to put a spoke in his wheel."

"And you've done it," said Bob, reaching for his pipe from the mantel-piece.

"I did do it. I can't do it any more. You know there were certain reasons which made a marriage between Janie Iver and me seem desirable? I'm saying nothing against her, and I don't intend to say a word against myself. Well, those reasons no longer exist. I have written to her to say so. She'll get that letter this afternoon."

"You've written to break off the engagement?" Bob spoke slowly and thoughtfully, but with no great surprise.

"Yes. She accepted me under a serious misapprehension. When I asked her I was in a position to which I had no----" He interrupted himself, frowning a little. Not even now was he ready to say that. "In a position which I no longer occupy," he amended, recovering his placidity. "All the world will know that very soon. I am no longer owner of Blent."

"What?" cried Bob, jumping up and looking hard at Harry. The surprise came now.

"And I am no longer what you called me just now--Lord Tristram. You know the law about succeeding to peerages and entailed lands? Very well. My birth has been discovered [he smiled for an instant] not to satisfy that law--the merits of which, Bob, we won't discuss. Consequently not I, but Miss Gainsborough succeeds my mother in the title and the property. I have informed Miss Gainsborough--I ought to say Lady Tristram--of these facts, and I'm on my way to London to see the lawyers and get everything done in proper order."

"Good God, do you mean what you say?"

"Oh, of course I do. Do you take me for an idiot, to come up here at six in the morning to talk balderdash?" Harry was obviously irritated. "Everybody will know soon. I came to tell you because I fancy you've some concern in it, and, as I say, I still want that spoke put in the Major's wheel."

Bob sat down and was silent for many moments, smoking hard.

"But Janie won't do that," he broke out at last. "She's too straight, too loyal. If she's accepted you----"

"A beautiful idea, Bob, if she was in love with me. But she isn't. Can you tell me you think she is?"

Bob grunted inarticulately--an obvious, though not a skilful, evasion of the question.

"And anyhow," Harry pursued, "the thing's at an end. I shan't marry her. Now if that suggests any action on your part I--well, I shall be glad I came to breakfast." He got up and went to the window, looking out on the neat little garden and to the paddock beyond.

In a moment Bob Broadley's hand was laid on his shoulder. He turned and faced him.

"What a thing for you! You--you lose it all?"

"I have given it all up."

"I can't realize it, you know. The change----"

"Perhaps I can't either. I don't know that I want to, Bob."

"Who made the discovery? How did it come out? Nobody ever had any suspicion of it!"

Harry looked at him long and thoughtfully, but in the end he only shook his head, saying, "Well, it's true anyhow."

"It beats me. I see what you mean about myself and--Still I give you my word I hate its happening. Who's this girl? Why is she to come here? Who knows anything about her?"

"You don't, of course," Harry conceded with a smile. "No more did I a week ago."

"Couldn't you have made a fight for it?"

"Yes, a deuced good fight. But I chose to let it go. Now don't go on looking as if you didn't understand the thing. It's simple enough."

"But Lady Tristram--your mother--must have known----"

"The question didn't arise as long as my mother lived," said Harry quickly. "Her title was all right, of course."

There was another question on the tip of Bob's tongue, but after a glance at Harry's face he did not put it; he could not ask Harry if he had known.