The Loudwater Mystery | Page 8

you that he was going to halve it, and he did not seem to like the idea of your seeing him about it."
"He'll like my seeing him about it even less than the idea of it," said Mrs. Truslove firmly, and there was a sudden gleam in her wild black eyes.
Mr. Manley looked at her, frowning faintly. Then he said in a rather hesitating manner: "I've never asked you about it. But why does the hog make you this allowance?"
"That's my dark past," she said in a teasing tone, smiling at him. "I suppose that as we're going to be married so soon I ought to make a clean breast of it, if you really want to know."
"Just as you like," said Mr. Manley, his face clearing a little at her careless tone.
"Well, the hog treated me badly--not really badly, because I didn't care enough about him to make it possible for him to treat me really badly, but just as badly as he could. For when he and I first met I was on the way to get engaged to a man, named Hardwicke--a rich city man, rather a bore, but a man who would make an excellent husband. Loudwater knew that Hardwicke was ready and eager to marry me, and I suppose that that helped to make him keen on me. At any rate, he made love to me, not nearly so badly as you'd think, and persuaded me to promise to marry him."
"I can't think how you could have done it!" cried Mr. Manley.
"How was I to know what a hog he was at home? At Trouville he was quite nice, as I tell you. Besides, there was the title--I thought I should like to be Lady Loudwater. You know, I do have strong impulses, and I act on them."
"Well, after all, you didn't marry him," said Mr. Manley in a tone of relief. "What did happen?"
"We were engaged for about two months. Then, about a month before the date fixed for our marriage, he met Olivia Quainton, fell in love with her, and broke off our engagement a week before our wedding-day."
"Well, of all the caddish tricks!" cried Mr. Manley.
"You can imagine how furious I was. And I wasn't going to stand it--not from Loudwater, at any rate. I had learnt a good deal more about him in the eleven weeks we were engaged, and, naturally, I wasn't pleased with what I had learnt. I set out to make myself very disagreeable. I saw him and did make myself very disagreeable. I told him a good many unpleasant things about himself which made him much more furious than I was myself."
"I'm glad some of it got through his thick skin," said Mr. Manley.
"A good deal of it did. Then I made it clear to him that he had robbed me of John Hardwicke and an excellent settlement in life, and told him that I was going to bring an action for breach of promise against him. That certainly got through his thick skin, for it's very painful to him to spend money on any one but himself. But he made terms at once, gave me this house furnished, and promised to allow me six hundred a year for life. You don't think I was wrong to take it?" she added anxiously.
"Certainly not," said Mr. Manley quickly and firmly.
Her face cleared and she said: "So many people would say that it was not nice my taking money for an injury like that."
"Rubbish! It wasn't as if you'd been in love with him," said Mr. Manley with the firmest conviction.
"That's the exact point. You do see things," she said, smiling at him gratefully. "If I had been, it would have been quite different."
"And how else were you to score off him except by hitting him in the pocket? That and his stomach are his only vulnerable points," said Mr. Manley viciously.
He was ignorant of Melchisidec's discovery of another.
"They are. And he certainly had robbed me of an income. It was only fair that he should make up for it," she said rather plaintively.
"Absolutely fair."
"Well, those were the terms. The house is mine all right; it was properly made over to me. But, stupidly, I didn't have a proper deed drawn up about the money. I had his promise. One supposes that one can take the word of an English Peer. But I think that it's really all right. I have his letters about it."
"There's no saying. You'd better see a lawyer about it and find out. But this isn't a very dark past," he said, and rose and came to her and kissed her.
He was, indeed, relieved and reassured. In these circumstances the six hundred a year was not an allowance at all. It was merely the payment