A Terrible Temptation | Page 2

cut off the entail, and settle the estates on him and his heirs; and so they
robbed me of every acre they could. Luckily my little estate of
Highmore was settled on my mother and her issue too tight for the
villains to undo."
These harsh expressions, applied to his own kin, and the abruptness and
heat they were uttered with, surprised and repelled his gentle listener.

She shrank a little away from him. He observed it. She replied not to
his words, but to her own thought:
"But, after all, it does seem hard." She added, with a little fervor, "But
it wasn't poor Sir Charles's doing, after all."
"He is content to reap the benefit," said Richard Bassett, sternly.
Then, finding he was making a sorry impression, he tried to get away
from the subject. I say tried, for till a man can double like a hare he will
never get away from his hobby. "Excuse me," said he; "I ought never to
speak about it. Let us talk of something else. You cannot enter into my
feelings; it makes my blood boil. Oh, Miss Bruce! you can't conceive
what a disinherited man feels--and I live at the very door: his old trees,
that ought to be mine, fling their shadows over my little flower beds;
the sixty chimneys of Huntercombe Hall look down on my cottage; his
acres of lawn run up to my little garden, and nothing but a ha-ha
between us."
"It is hard," said Miss Bruce, composedly; not that she entered into a
hardship of this vulgar sort, but it was her nature to soothe and please
people.
"Hard!" cried Richard Bassett, encouraged by even this faint sympathy;
"it would be unendurable but for one thing--I shall have my own some
day."
"I am glad of that," said the lady; "but how?"
"By outliving the wrongful heir."
Miss Bruce turned pale. She had little experience of men's passions.
"Oh, Mr. Bassett!" said she--and there was something pure and holy in
the look of sorrow and alarm she cast on the presumptuous
speaker--"pray do not cherish such thoughts. They will do you harm.
And remember life and death are not in our hands. Besides--"
"Well?"'
"Sir Charles might--"
"Well?"
"Might he not--marry--and have children?" This with more hesitation
and a deeper blush than appeared absolutely necessary.
"Oh, there's no fear of that. Property ill-gotten never descends. Charles
is a worn-out rake. He was fast at Eton--fast at Oxford--fast in London.
Why, he looks ten years older than I, and he is three years younger. He
had a fit two years ago. Besides, he is not a marrying man. Bassett and

Huntercombe will be mine. And oh! Miss Bruce, if ever they are
mine--"
"Sir Charles Bassett!" trumpeted a servant at the door; and then waited,
prudently, to know whether his young lady, whom he had caught
blushing so red with one gentleman, would be at home to another.
"Wait a moment," said Miss Bruce to him. Then, discreetly ignoring
what Bassett had said last, and lowering her voice almost to a whisper,
she said, hurriedly: "You should not blame him for the faults of others.
There--I have not been long acquainted with either, and am little
entitled to inter--But it is such a pity you are not friends. He is very
good, I assure you, and very nice. Let me reconcile you two. May I?"
This well-meant petition was uttered very sweetly; and, indeed--if I
may be permitted--in a way to dissolve a bear.
But this was not a bear, nor anything else that is placable; it was a man
with a hobby grievance; so he replied in character:
"That is impossible so long as he keeps me out of my own." He had the
grace, however, to add, half sullenly, "Excuse me; I feel I have been
too vehement."
Miss Bruce, thus repelled, answered, rather coldly:
"Oh, never mind _that;_ it was very natural.--I am at home, then," said
she to the servant.
Mr. Bassett took the hint, but turned at the door, and said, with no little
agitation, "I was not aware he visits you. One word--don't let his
ill-gotten acres make you quite forget the disinherited one." And so he
left her, with an imploring look.
She felt red with all this, so she slipped out at another door, to cool her
cheeks and imprison a stray curl for Sir Charles.
He strolled into the empty room, with the easy, languid air of fashion.
His features were well cut, and had some nobility; but his sickly
complexion and the lines under his eyes told a tale of dissipation. He
appeared ten years older than he was, and thoroughly _blase._
Yet when Miss Bruce entered the room with a smile and a little blush,
he