The Treasure of Heaven | Page 8

in order to get rid of the trouble of rearing him. He turned out a famous man,--but though he was, in due course, told his history, he never acknowledged the unnatural vendors of his flesh and blood as his parents, and quite right too. No,--I have had too much experience of life to try such a doubtful business as that of adopting a child. The very fact of adoption by so miserably rich a man as myself would buy a child's duty and obedience rather than win it. I will have no heir at all, unless I can discover one whose love for me is sincerely unselfish and far above all considerations of wealth or worldly advantage."
"It is rather late in the day, perhaps," said Vesey after a pause, speaking hesitatingly, "but--but--you might marry?"
Helmsley laughed loudly and harshly.
"Marry! I! At seventy! My dear Vesey, you are a very old friend, and privileged to say what others dare not, or you would offend me. If I had ever thought of marrying again I should have done so two or three years after my wife's death, when I was in the fifties, and not waited till now, when my end, if not actually near, is certainly well in sight. Though I daresay there are plenty of women who would marry me--even me--at my age,--knowing the extent of my income. But do you think I would take one of them, knowing in my heart that it would be a mere question of sale and barter? Not I!--I could never consent to sink so low in my own estimation of myself. I can honestly say I have never wronged any woman. I shall not begin now."
"I don't see why you should take that view of it," murmured Sir Francis placidly. "Life is not lived nowadays as it was when you first entered upon your career. For one thing, men last longer and don't give up so soon. Few consider themselves old at seventy. Why should they? There's a learned professor at the Pasteur Institute who declares we ought all to live to a hundred and forty. If he's right, you are still quite a young man."
Helmsley rose from his chair with a slightly impatient gesture.
"We won't discuss any so-called 'new theories,'" he said. "They are only echoes of old fallacies. The professor's statement is merely a modern repetition of the ancient belief in the elixir of life. Shall we go in?"
Vesey got up from his lounging position more slowly and stiffly than Helmsley had done. Some ten years younger as he was, he was evidently less active.
"Well," he said, as he squared his shoulders and drew himself erect, "we are no nearer a settlement of what I consider a most urgent and important affair than when we began our conversation."
Helmsley shrugged his shoulders.
"When I come back to town, we will go into the question again," he said.
"You are off at the end of the week?"
"Yes."
"Going abroad?"
"I--I think so."
The answer was given with a slight touch of hesitation.
"Your last 'function' of the season is the dance you are giving to-morrow night, I suppose," continued Sir Francis, studying with a vague curiosity the spare, slight figure of his companion, who had turned from him and, with one foot on the sill of the open French window, was just about to enter the room beyond.
"Yes. It is Lucy's birthday."
"Ah! Miss Lucy Sorrel! How old is she?"
"Just twenty-one."
And, as he spoke, Helmsley stepped into the apartment from which the window opened out upon the balcony, and waited a moment for Vesey to follow.
"She has always been a great favourite of yours," said Vesey, as he entered. "Now, why----"
"Why don't I leave her my fortune, you would ask?" interrupted Helmsley, with a touch of sarcasm. "Well, first, because she is a woman, and she might possibly marry a fool or a wastrel. Secondly, because though I have known her ever since she was a child of ten, I have no liking for her parents or for any of her family connections. When I first took a fancy to her she was playing about on the shore at a little seaside place on the Sussex coast,--I thought her a pretty little creature, and have made rather a pet of her ever since. But beyond giving her trinkets and bon-bons, and offering her such gaieties and amusements as are suitable to her age and sex, I have no other intentions concerning her."
Sir Francis took a comprehensive glance round the magnificent drawing-room in which he now stood,--a drawing-room more like a royal reception-room of the First Empire than a modern apartment in the modern house of a merely modern millionaire. Then he chuckled softly to himself, and a broad smile spread itself among the furrows of his somewhat severely featured countenance.
"Mrs. Sorrel