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                             LEONORE STUBBS

                            BY L. B. WALFORD

          AUTHOR OF "MR. SMITH," "THE BABY'S GRANDMOTHER," ETC.


LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
91 & 93 FIFTH AVENUE,
NEW YORK LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
1908




CONTENTS


I. "SHE HAS NO SETTLEMENT, DAMN IT"

II. ON THE STATION PLATFORM

III. SPECULATIONS

IV. A DULL BREAKFAST-TABLE

V. OLD PLAYMATES MEET

VI. A REVELATION

VII. "I HAVE LOST SOMETHING THAT I NEVER HAD"

VIII. A CAT AND MOUSE GAME

IX. "I'D LIKE TO HAVE THINGS ON A SOUNDER BASIS"

X. THE THIRD CASE

XI. DR. CRAIG'S WISDOM

XII. THE PHOTOGRAPH AND THE ORIGINAL

XIII. "I AM TO GIVE YOU A WIDE BERTH, ALWAYS"

XIV. PAUL GOES--AND RETURNS

XV. "YOU'VE BROKEN MY HEART, I THINK"

XVI. TEMPTATION

XVII. A KNIGHT TO THE RESCUE

XVIII. "A TURN OF THE WHEEL"

XIX. EPILOGUE




CHAPTER I.

"SHE HAS NO SETTLEMENT, DAMN IT."


"She can't come."

"But, father----"

"She shan't come, then--if you like that better."

"But, father----"

"Aye, of course, it's 'But father'--I might have known it would be that.
However, you may 'But father' me to the end of my time, you don't move
me. I tell you, Sukey, you're a fool. You know no more than an unhatched
chicken--and if you think I'm going to give in to their imposition--for
it's nothing else--you are mistaken."

"I was only going to say----"

"Say what you will, say what you will; my mind's made up; and the sooner
you understand that, and Leonore understands that, the better. You can
write and tell her so."

"What am I to tell her?"

"What I say. That she has made her own bed and must lie upon it."

"But you gave your consent to her marriage, and never till now----"

"I tell you, girl, you're a fool. Consent? Of course I gave my consent.
I was cheated--swindled. I married my daughter to a rich man, and he
dies and leaves her a pauper! Never knew such a trick in my life. And
you to stand up for it!"

General Boldero and his eldest daughter were alone, as may have been
gathered, and the latter held in her hand, a black-edged letter at which
she glanced from time to time, it being obviously the apple of discord
between them.

It had come by the afternoon post; and the general, having met the
postman in the avenue, and himself relieved him of the old-fashioned
leathern postbag with which he was hastening on, and having further,
according to established precedent, unlocked the same and distributed
the contents, there had been no chance of putting off the present evil
hour.

Instead there had been an instant demand: "What says Leonore? What's the
figure, eh? She must know by this time. Eh, what? A hundred and fifty?
Two hundred? What? Two hundred thousand would be nothing out of the way
in these days. Poor Goff wasn't a millionaire, but money sticks to money
and he had no expensive tastes. He must have been quietly rolling
up,--all the better for his widow, poor child. Little Leonore will
scarcely know what to do with a princely income, and we must see
to it that she doesn't get into the hands of sharpers and
fortune-hunters----" and so on, and so on.

Then the bolt fell. The "princely income" vanished into the air. The
problematic two hundred thousand was neither here nor there, nor
anywhere. As for "Poor Goff," General Boldero was never heard to speak
of his defunct son-in-law in those terms again.

In his rage and disappointment at finding himself, as he chose to
consider it, outwitted by a man upon whom he had always secretly looked
down, the true feelings wherewith he had regarded an alliance welcomed
by his cupidity, but resented by his pride, escaped without let or
hindrance.

"What did we want with a person called Stubbs? What the deuce could we
want with him or any of his kind but their money?" demanded he, pacing
the room, black with wrath. "I never should have let the fellow set foot
within these doors if I had dreamed of this happening. I took him for
an honest man. What? What d'ye say? Humph! Don't believe a word of it;
he _must_ have known; and as for his expecting to pull things round,
that's all very fine. It's a swindle, the whole thing." Then suddenly
the speaker stopped short and his large lips shot out as he faced his
daughter: "Does Leonore say she hasn't a penny?"

"She says she will have to give up everything to the creditors. I
suppose," said Susan, hesitating, "everything may not mean--I thought
marriage settlements could not be touched by creditors?"

"No more they can, that's the deuce of it."

"Then----?" She looked inquiringly, and strange to say, the fierce
countenance before her  beneath the look.

If he could have evaded it, General Boldero would have let the question
remain unanswered, although it was only Sue, Sue who knew her parent as
no one else knew him--before whom he made no pretences, assumed no
disguises--who had now to learn an ugly truth;--as it was, he shot it at
her with as good an air as he could assume.

"She has no settlement, damn it."

"No settlement?" In her amazement the open letter fell from the
listener's hands. She recollected, she could never forget, the glee
with which her father had rubbed his hands over the "clinking
settlement" he had anticipated from Leonore's wealthy suitor, nor the
manner in which it had insinuated itself into every announcement of the
match. No settlement? She simply stared in silence.

"If you will have it, it was my doing," owned General Boldero
reluctantly; "and I could bite my tongue off now to think of it! But
what with four of you on my hands, and the rents going down and
everything else going up, I had nothing to settle--that is, I had
nothing I could _conveniently_ settle, and it might have been awkward,
uncommonly awkward. I could hardly have got out of it if Godfrey had
expected a _quid pro quo_. And he might--he very well might. A man of
his class can't be expected to understand how a man of ours has to live
decently and keep up appearances while yet he hasn't a brass farthing to
spare. I'll say that for Godfrey Stubbs, he seemed sensible on the point
when I tried to explain; and--and somehow I was taken in and thought:
'You may be a bounder, but you are a very worthy fellow'."

He paused, and continued. "Then he suggested--it was his own idea, I
give you my word for it--that we should have no greedy lawyers lining
their pockets out of either of our purses. What he said was--I've as
clear a recollection of it as though it were yesterday--'Oh, bother the
settlement, I'll make a will leaving everything I possess to
Leonore,'--and I, like a numskull, jumped at the notion. It never
occurred to me that the will of a business man may be so much waste
paper. His creditors can snap their fingers at any will. That's what
Leonore means. She's found it out, and flies post haste to her desk to
write that she must come back here."

"So she must."

"So she must _not_. I won't have it. The whole neighbourhood would ring
with it."

"By your own showing," said Sue quietly, "in order to free yourself from
the necessity of making any provision on your part when the marriage
took place, you precluded----" but she got no further.

"Provision on my part?" burst forth her father, who was now himself
again, and ready to browbeat anybody; "what need had the girl of any
provision on my part? She was marrying a fellow with tenfold my income.
The little I could have contrived to spare would have been a mere drop
in the bucket to him, and I should have been ashamed to mention it. I
can tell you I felt monstrous uncomfortable having to approach the
subject at all; and never was more thankful than when the young man,
like the decent fellow I took him then to be, pitchforked the whole
business overboard."

"All the same, it is quite plain," persevered she, "that it was with
your consent and approbation that Leonore had no money settled on her,
so that it could not be taken from her now;--and that being the case,
you have no choice but to provide for her in the future."

"You mean to say that it's due to me your sister's left a pauper on our
hands?"

"That's exactly what I do mean. And you must either give her enough to
enable her to live properly elsewhere, or receive her back among us, as
she herself suggests. Besides which, you must make her the same
allowance you make the rest of us," and the speaker rose, closing the
controversy.

Only she could have carried it on to such a close, indeed only General
Boldero's eldest daughter--and only daughter by his first
marriage--would have engaged in it at all. The younger girls, of whom
there were still two unmarried and living at home, never, in common
parlance, stood up to their father--though, if he had not been as blind
as such an autocrat is wont to be, he would have easily detected that
they had their own ways of rendering his tyrannical rule tolerable, and
that while he fancied himself the sole dictator of his house, he had in
fact neither part nor lot in its real existence.

What is more easily satisfied than the vanity of stupid importance
always upon its perch? The general's habits and hours were known, also
the few points upon which he was really adamant. He was proud, and he
was mean. He liked to live pompously, and fare luxuriously,--he made it
his business to cut off every expense that did not affect his own
comfort, or dignity. But that done, other matters could go on as they
chose for him.

So that while it was not to be thought of that Boldero Abbey should
exist without a full staff of retainers without and within, it was all
that his eldest daughter--the family manager--could do to get her own
and her sisters' allowances paid with any regularity--and whereas the
stables were well supplied with horses, and a new carriage was no
uncommon purchase, it was as much as any one's place was worth to hire a
fly from the station on an unexpectedly wet day.

When, exactly three years before the date on which our story opens,
there had appeared on the scene a suitor for the hand of the