" Thank you very much, sir! I will leave the matter entirely in your hands. Can you tell me the address of my aunts I As you will have seen by my father's letter, he believed implicitly in their affection for him."
" Their address is, The Manor House, Wimperton, Tavistock, Devon. They retired there at the accession of their brother to the title. It has been used as a dower house in the family for many years, and pending the search for your father, I obtained permission for them to continue to reside there. I was not obliged to ask for an allowance for them, as they had an income under their mother's marriage-settlement sufficient for them to live there in comfort. I will not give you the letter addressed to them, as I wish to show the original in court; but I will have a copy made for you at once, and I will attest it. Now may I ask how you are situated with regard to money? I have sufficient confidence in the justice of your claim to advance any sum for your immediate wants."
"Thank you, sir! I am in no need of any advance. My mother's savings amounted to five hundred pounds, of which I only drew fifty to buy my outfit when I went up to the Soudan. My pay sufficed for my wants there, and I drew out the remaining four hundred and fifty pounds when I left Cairo, so I am amply provided."
Gregory remained four days in London, obtaining suitable clothes; then, attended by Zaki, he took his place in the Great Western for Tavistock. Zaki had already picked up a good deal of English, and Gregory talked to him only in that language on their way down from the battle-field, so that he could now express himself in simple phrases. Mr. Tufton had on the previous day written, at Gregory's request, to his aunts, saying that the son of their brother had called upon him and given him proofs, which he considered incontestable, of his identity and of the death of his father. He was the bearer of a letter from his father to them, and proposed delivering it the next day in person. He agreed with Gregory that it was advisable to send down this letter, as otherwise the ladies might doubt whether he was really what he claimed to be, as his father's letter might very well have come into the hands of a third person.
He went down by the night-mail to Tavistock, put up at an hotel, and after breakfast drove over to the Manor House, and sent in a card which he had had printed in town. He was shown into a room where the two ladies were waiting for him. They had been some four or five years younger than his father, a fact of which he was not aware, and instead of being elderly women, as he expected, he found by their appearance they were scarcely entering middle age. They were evidently much agitated.
" I have come down without waiting for an invitation," he said. "I was anxious to deliver my father's letter to you, or at least a copy of it, as soon as possible. It was written before his death, some eighteen years ago, and was intended for my mother to give to you should she return to England. Its interest to you consists chiefly in the proof of my father's affection for you, and that he felt he could rely on yours for him. I may say that this is a copy, signed as correct by Mr. Tufton. He could not give me the original, as it would be required as an evidence of my father's identity in the application he is about to make for me to be declared heir to the title."
"Then Gregory has been dead eighteen years!" the elder of the ladies said. "We have always hoped that he would be alive in one of the colonies, and that sooner or later he would see the advertisement that had been put in the papers."
"No, madam; he went out to Alexandria with my mother shortly before I was born. He died some three or four years before his brother. It was seldom my mother saw an English paper. Unfortunately, as it turned out, my father had dropped his surname when he accepted a situation, which was a subordinate one, at Alexandria, and his reason for taking it was, that my mother was in weak health and the doctor said it was necessary she should go to a warm climate; therefore had any of her friends seen the advertisement, they would not have known that it applied to her. I myself did not know that my proper name was Hartley until a year back, when I discovered my father's journal at Hebbeh, the place where he was murdered, and then opened the documents that my mother had entrusted to me before her death, with an injunction not to open them until I had ascertained for certain that my father was no longer alive."
One of the ladies took the letter and opened it. They read it together. "Poor Gregory !" one said, wiping her eyes, "we were both fond of him, and certainly would have done all in our power to assist his widow. He was nearer our age than Geoffrey. It was a terrible grief to us when he quarrelled with our father. Of course our sympathies were with Gregory, but we never ventured to say so, and our father never mentioned his name from the day he left the house. Why did not your mother send his letter to us?"
" Because she did not need assistance. She was maintaining herself and me in comfort by teaching music, French, and English to the wives and children of several of the high Egyptian officials."
" How long is it since you lost her?"
" More than three years ago. At her death I was fortunate enough to obtain an appointment similar to that my father had, and at the same time a commission in the Egyptian service, and have been fortunate in being two or three times mentioned in dispatches."
"Yes; curiously enough, after receiving Mr. Tufton's letter we saw Colonel Wingate's dispatch in the paper, in which your name is mentioned. We should have been astonished indeed had we not opened the letter before we looked at the paper. Well, Gregory, we are very glad to see you, and to find that you have done honour to the name. The dispatch said that you have been previously mentioned under the name of Gregory Hilliard. We always file our papers, and we spent an hour after breakfast in going through them. I suppose you threw up your appointment as soon as you discovered that Geoffrey died years ago, and that you had come into the title?"
" I should have thrown it up, but Lord Kitchener was good enough to give me six months' leave, so that if I should fail to prove my right to the title, I could return there and take up my work again. He was so kind as to say that I should be given a responsible position in the civil administration of the Soudan."
" Well, we both feel very proud of you, and it does sound wonderful that, being under twenty, you should have got on so well, without friends or influence. I hope you intend to stay with us until you have to go up to London about these affairs."
" I shall be very happy to stay a few days, Aunt, but it is better that I should be on the spot, as there may be questions that have to be answered, and signatures, and all sorts of things. I have brought my Arab servant down with me. He has been with me for three years, and is most faithful and devoted, and moreover he once saved my life at tremendous risk to himself."
" Oh, of course we can put him up! Can he speak English?"
"He speaks a little English, and is improving fast."
"Does he dress as a native?"
"No, Aunt; he would soon freeze to death in his native garb. As soon as I got down to Cairo with him I put him into good European clothes. He is a fine specimen of a Soudan Arab, but when he came to me he was somewhat weakly; however, he soon got over that."
" Where is he now?"
" He is with the trap outside. I told him that he had better not come in until I had seen you, for I thought that your domestics would not know what to do with him till they had your orders."
" You brought your portmanteau with you, I hope ?"
" I have brought it, but not knowing whether it would be wanted, for I did not know whether you would take sufficiently to me to ask me to stay."
" The idea of such a thing! You must have had a bad opinion of us."
"No, Aunt; I had the best of opinions. I am sure that my father would not have written as he did to you unless he had been very fond of you; still, as at present I am not proved to be your nephew, I thought that you might not be disposed to ask me to stay. Now, with your permission I will go and tell Zaki—that is the man's name—to bring in my portmanteau; I can then send the trap back."