A Terrible Temptation | Page 2

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 brightened up and looked handsome, and greeted her with momentary warmth.
After the usual inquiries she asked him if he had met any body.
"Where?"
"Here; just now."
"No."
"What, nobody at all?"
"Only my sulky cousin; I don't call him anybody," drawled Sir Charles, who was now relapsing into his normal condition of semi-apathy.
"Oh," said Miss Bruce gayly, "you must expect him