"My father's name?" she asked.
He nodded.
She hung her head thoughtfully for a moment, then slipping to the other side of the stone laid her hand on another.
"My mother's?"
Again he signified yes.
"And this? Is this sister's name? No, she's not buried yet. I had a brother. Is it his?"
Ransom bowed. How tell her that it was a false inscription and that the man whose death it commemorated was not only alive but had only a little while before spoken to her.
"I didn't like my brother. He was cruel and liked to hurt people. I'm glad he's dead."
Ransom drew her away. Her frankness was that of a child, but it produced an uncomfortable feeling. He didn't like this brother either, and in this thoughtless estimate of hers he seemed to read a warning to which his own nature intuitively responded.
"Come!" he motioned, leading the way out.
She followed with a smile, and together they entered the highway. As they did so, Ransom caught sight of a man speeding down the hill before them on a bicycle. He had not come front the upper road, or they would have seen him as he flew past the gateway. Where had he come from, then? From the peep-hole where Ransom himself had stood a few minutes before. No other conclusion was possible, and Ransom felt both angry and anxious till he could find out who the man was. This he did not succeed in doing till he reached the hotel. There a bicycle leaning against a tree gave point to his questions, and he learned that it belonged to a clerk in one of the small stores near by, but that the man who had just ridden it up and down the road on a trial of speed was the stranger who had just come to town with Mr. Hazen.
CHAPTER XXI
ON THE CARS
This episode, which to Ransom's mind would bear but one interpretation, gave him ample food for thought. He decided to be more circumspect in the future and to keep an eye out for inquisitive strangers. Not that he had any thing to conceal, but no man enjoys having his proceedings watched, especially where a woman is concerned.
That Hazen was antagonistic to him he had always known; but that he was regarded by him with suspicion he had not realized till now. Hazen suspicious of him! that meant what? He wished that he had Mr. Harper at his side to enlighten him.
It was now five o'clock and he was sitting in his room awaiting the usual report from the river, when a quick tap at his door was followed by the entrance of the very man he was thinking about. He rose eagerly to receive him, determined, however, to allow no inconsiderate impulse to drive him into unnecessary speech.
"I have already said too much," he reminded himself in self-directed monition. "It's time he did some of the talking."
Hazen seemed willing enough to do this. Taking the seat proffered him, he opened the conversation as follows:
"Mr. Ransom, I have been doing you an injustice. I do not consider it necessary to tell you just how I have found this out, but I am now convinced that you are as much in the dark as myself in regard to this unfortunate affair, and are as willing as I am to take all justifiable means to enlighten yourself. I own that at first I thought it more than probable you were in collusion with the girl here to deceive me. That I wouldn't stand. I'm glad to find you as truly a victim of this mystery as myself."
Ransom straightened himself.
"If this is an apology," he returned, "I am willing to accept it in the spirit in which it is proffered. But I should like something more than apology from you. Candor for candor;—your whole story in return for mine."
"I'm afraid it would be a trifle tedious,—my whole story," smiled Hazen. "If you mean such part of it as concerns Georgian's peculiar actions and the complications with which we are at this moment struggling, I can only repeat what I have already told you, both at the St. Denis in New York and here. I am Georgian's returned brother, saved from the jaws of hell to see my own country again. I arrived in New York on the tenth. Naturally, after securing a room at the hotel, I took up the papers. They were full of the approaching marriage of Miss Hazen. I recognized my sister's name, though not her splendor, for we were the sole survivors of a poor country family and I knew nothing of the legacy I am now told she received. Anxious to see her, I attended the ceremony. She recognized me. I had not expected this, and feeling old affections revive, I followed her friends to the house and was presented to them and to you. What I whispered to her on this occasion were my assumed name and the place where I was to be found. My changed countenance called for explanations, for which a bridal reception offered no opportunity. Besides, as I have already said, I stood in sore need of a definite amount of money. I meant her to come and see me, but I did not expect her to play a trick on you in order to do so. This had its birth in the to me unaccountable mystery embodied in the girl you call Anitra, but whom I'm not ready yet to name. For when I do, action must follow conviction and that without mercy or delay."
"Action?" repeated Ransom, with quick suspicion and a confused rush of contradictory visions in his mind. "What do you mean by that?"
Hazen covered his chin with his hand.
"I will try and explain," he replied. "If I am abrupt in my language, it is owing to the exigencies of the case. I have no time to waste and no disposition to whitewash a rough piece of work. To speak to the point, I have an intense interest in my sister Georgian. I have little or none in my sister Anitra. Georgian's intelligence, good-will, and command of money would be of inestimable benefit to me. Anitra, on the contrary, could be nothing but a burden, unless—" here he cast a very sharp glance at Ransom—"unless Georgian should have been sufficiently considerate to leave her a good share of her fortune in the will you say she made just before her disappearance and supposed death."
"That I can say nothing about," rejoined Ransom in answer to this feeler. "The will is in the hands of her lawyer, but if it will help your argument any we will suppose that she left her sister to the care of her friends without any especial provision for her in the way of money."
The steady fingers clutching the scarred neck loosed their grip to wave this supposition aside.
"A hardly supposable case," was the cold comment with which he supplemented this disclaimer; "but one which would make the girl a burden indeed; a burden which for many reasons I could not assume." Here he struck himself sharply on the neck, with the first display of passion he had shown. "My advantages are not such as to make it easy for me to support myself. It would be simply impossible for me to undertake the care of any girl, least of all of one with a manifest infirmity."
"Anitra will prosper without your care," replied Ransom, overlooking the heartlessness of the man in the mad, unaccountable sense of relief with which he listened to his withdrawal from concerns for which he showed so little sympathy. "There are others who will be glad to do all that can be done for Georgian's forsaken sister."
"Yes. That is all right, but—" Here Hazen squared himself across the top of the table before which he had been sitting; "I must be made sure that the facts have been rightly represented to me and that the girl now in this house is Georgian's deserted sister. I'm not yet satisfied that she is, and I must be convinced not only on this point but on many others, before this day is over. Business of great importance calls me back to the city and, it may be, out of the country. I may never be able to spend another day on purely personal affairs, so this one must tell. I have a scheme (it is a very simple one) which, if carried out as I have planned, will satisfy me as nothing else will as to the identity of the girl we will call, from lack of positive knowledge, Anitra. Will you help me in its furtherance? It lies with you to do so."
"First, your reasons for doubting the girl," retorted Ransom. "They must be excellent ones for you to resist the evidence of such conclusive proofs as you have yourself been witness to since entering this house. I am Georgian's husband. I have the strongest wish in the world to see her again at my side; yet with the exception of her wonderful likeness to my wife, I find nothing in this raw if beautiful girl, of the polished, highly trained woman I married. I have not even succeeded in startling her ear—something which I should have been able to do if she were not the totally deaf woman she appears. Confide to me then your reasons for demanding additional proofs of her identity. If they carry conviction with them, I will aid you in any scheme you can propose which will neither frighten nor afflict her."