“I did not need to be introduced. I saw a girl in the hall, and I guessed it must be Audrey. ’Cute of me, was it not? Do you know, Uncle Ned, I don’t much like this place, but I like you. Yes, I am right-down smitten with you, but I don’t think I like anything else. You don’t mind if I am frank, Uncle Ned; it always was my way. We are brought up like that in Tasmania – Audrey, don’t frown at me; you don’t look pretty when you frown. But, oh! I say, the bell has gone, has it not?”

“Yes, my dear,” said Lady Frances.

“And it means dinner, does it not?”

“Certainly, Evelyn,” said her uncle, bending towards her with the most polished and stately grace. “Allow me, my niece, to conduct you to the dining-room.”

“How droll you are, uncle!” said Evelyn. “But I like you all the same. You are a right-down good old sort. I am awfully peckish; I shall be glad of a round meal.”

CHAPTER III. – THE CRADLE LIFE OF WILD EVE

Eighteen years before the date of this story, two brothers had parted with angry words. They were both in love with the same woman, and the younger brother had won. The elder brother, only one year his senior, could not stand defeat.

“I cannot stay in the old place,” he said. “You can occupy the Castle during my absence.”

To this arrangement Edward Wynford agreed.

“Where are you going?” he said to his brother Frank.

“To the other side of the world – Australia probably. I don’t know when I shall return. It does not much matter. I shall never marry. The estate will be yours. If Lady Frances has a son, it will belong to him.”

“You must not think of that,” said Edward. “I will live at the Castle for a few years in order to keep it warm for you, but you will come back; you will get over this. If she had loved you, old man, do you think I would have taken her from you? But she chose me from the very first.”

“I don’t blame you, Ned,” said Frank. “You are as innocent of any intention of harm to me as the unborn babe, but I love her too well to stay in the old country. I am off. I don’t want her ever to know. You will promise me, won’t you, that you will never tell her why I have skulked off and dropped my responsibilities on to your shoulders? Promise me that, at least, will you not?”

Edward Wynford promised his brother, and the brother went away.

In the former generation father and son had agreed to break off the entail, and although there was no intention of carrying this action into effect, and Frank, as eldest son, inherited the great estates of Wynford Castle, yet at his father’s death he was in the position of one who could leave the estates to any one he pleased.

During his last interview with his brother he said to him distinctly:

“Remember, if Lady Frances has a son I wish him to be, after yourself, the next heir to the property.”

“But if she has not a son?” said Edward.

“In that case I have nothing to say. It is most unlikely that I shall marry. The property will come to you in the ordinary way, and as the entail is out off, you can leave it to whom you please.”

“Do not forget that at present you can leave the estate and the Castle to whomever you please, even to an utter stranger,” said Edward, with a slight smile.

To this remark Frank made no answer. The next day the brothers parted – as it turned out, for life. Edward married Lady Frances, and they went to live at Wynford Castle. Edward heard once from Frank during the voyage, and then not at all, until he received a letter which must have been written a couple of months before his brother’s death. It was forwarded to him in a strange hand, and was full of extraordinary and painful tidings. Frank Wynford had died suddenly of acute fever, but before his death he had arranged all his affairs. His letter ran as follows:

“My dear Edward, – If I live you will never get this letter; if I die it reaches you all in good time. When last we parted I told you I should never marry. So much for man’s proposals. When I got to Tasmania I went on a ranch, and now I am the husband of the farmer’s daughter. Her name is Isabel. She is a handsome woman, and the mother of a daughter. Why I married her I can not tell you, except that I can honestly say it was not with any sense of affection. But she is my wife, and the mother of a little baby girl. Edward, when I last heard from you, you told me that you also had a daughter. If a son follows all in due course, what I have to say will not much signify; but if you have no son I should wish the estates eventually to come to my little girl. I do not believe in a woman’s administration of large and important estates like mine, but what I say to myself now is, as well my girl as your girl. Therefore, Edward, my dear brother, I leave all my estates to you for your lifetime, and at your death all the property which came to me by my father’s will goes to my little girl, to be hers when you are no longer there. I want you to receive my daughter, and to ask your wife to bring her up. I want her to have all the advantages that a home with Lady Frances must confer on her. I want my child and your child to be friends. I do no injustice to your daughter, Edward, when I make my will, for she inherits money on her mother’s side. I will acquaint my wife with particulars of this letter, and in case I catch the fever which is raging here now she will know how to act. My lawyer in Hobart Town will forward this, and see that my will is carried into effect. There is a provision in it for the maintenance of my daughter until she joins you at Castle Wynford. Whenever that event takes place she is your care. I have only one thing to add. The child might go to you at once (I have a premonition that I am about to die very soon), and thus never know that she had an Australian mother, but the difficulty lies in the fact that the mother loves the child and will scarcely be induced to part with her. You must not receive my poor wife unless indeed a radical change takes place in her; and although I have begged of her to give up the child, I doubt if she will do it. I cannot add any more, for time presses. My will is legal in every respect, and there will be no difficulty in carrying it into effect.”

This strange letter was discovered by Frank Wynford’s widow a month after his death. It was sealed and directed to his brother in England. She longed to read it, but restrained herself. She sent it on to her husband’s lawyer in Hobart Town, and in due course it arrived at Castle Wynford, causing a great deal of consternation and distress both in the minds of the Squire and Lady Frances.

Edward immediately went out to Tasmania. He saw the little baby who was all that was left of his brother, and he also saw that brother’s wife. The coarse, loud-voiced woman received him with almost abuse. What was to be done? The mother refused to part with the child, and Edward Wynford, for his own wife’s sake and his own baby daughter’s sake, could not urge her to come to Castle Wynford.

“I do not care twopence,” she remarked, “whether the child has grand relations or not. I loved her father, and I love her. She is my child, and so she has got to put up with me. As long as I live she stays with me here. I am accustomed to ranch life, and she will get accustomed to it too. I will not spare money on her, for there is plenty, and she will be a very rich woman some day. But while I live she stays with me; the only way out of it is, that you ask me to your fine place in England. Even if you do, I don’t think I should be bothered to go to you, but you might have the civility to ask me.”

Squire Wynford went away, however, without giving this invitation. He spoke to his wife on the subject. In that conversation he was careful to adhere to his brother’s wish not to reveal to her that that brother’s deep affection for herself had been the cause of his banishment. Lady Frances was an intensely just and upright woman. She had gone through a very bad quarter of an hour when she was told that her little girl was to be supplanted by the strange child of an objectionable mother, but she quickly recovered herself.

“I will not allow jealousy to enter into my life,” she said; and she even went the length of writing herself to Mrs. Wynford in Tasmania, and invited her with the baby to come and stay at Wynford Castle. Mrs. Wynford in Tasmania, however, much to the relief of the good folks at home, declined the invitation.

“I have no taste for English grandeur,” she said. “I was brought up in a wild state, and I would rather stay as I was reared. The child is well; you can have her when she is grown up or when I am dead.”

Years passed after this letter and there was no communication between little Evelyn Wynford, in the wilds of Tasmania, and her rich and stately relatives at Castle Wynford. Lady Frances fervently hoped that God would give her a son, but this hope was not to be realized. Audrey was her only child, and soon it seemed almost like a dim, forgotten fact that the real heiress was in Tasmania, and that Audrey had no more to do in the future with the stately home of her ancestors than she would have had had she possessed a brother. But when she was sixteen there suddenly came a change. Mrs. Wynford died suddenly. There was now no reason why Evelyn should not come home, and accordingly, untutored, uncared for, a passionate child with a curious, wilful strain in her, she arrived on New Year’s Day at Castle Wynford.

Evelyn Wynford’s nature was very complex. She loved very few people, but those she did love she loved forever. No change, no absence, no circumstances could alter her regard. In her ranch life and during her baby days she had clung to her mother. Mrs. Wynford was fierce and passionate and wilful. Little Evelyn admired her, whatever she did. She trotted round the farm after her; she learnt to ride almost as soon as she could walk, and she followed her mother barebacked on the wildest horses on the ranch. She was fearless and stubborn, and gave way to terrible fits of passion, but with her mother she was gentle as a lamb. Mrs. Wynford was fond of the child in the careless, selfish, and yet fierce way which belonged to her nature. Mrs. Wynford’s sole idea of affection was that her child should be with her morning, noon, and night; that for no education, for no advantages, should she be parted from her mother for a moment. Night after night the two slept in each other’s arms; day after day they were together. The farmer’s daughter was a very strong woman, and as her father died a year or two after her husband, she managed the ranch herself, keeping everything in order, and not allowing the slightest insubordination on the part of her servants. Little Evelyn, too, learnt her mother’s masterful ways. She could reprimand; she could insist upon obedience; she could shake her tiny fists in the faces of those who dared to oppose her; and when she was disporting herself so Mrs. Wynford stood by and laughed.

“Hullo!” she used to cry. “See the spirit in the young un. She takes after me. A nice time her English relatives will have with her! But she will never go to them – never while I live.”

Although Mrs. Wynford had long ago made up her mind that Evelyn was to have none of the immediate advantages of her birth and future prospects, she was fond of talking to the child about the grandeur which lay before her.

“If I die, Eve,” she said, “you will have to go across the sea in a big ship to England. You would have a rough time of it, perhaps, on board, but you won’t mind that, my beauty.”

“I am not a beauty, mother,” answered Evelyn. “You know I am not. You know I am a very plain girl.”

“Hark to the child!” shrieked Mrs. Wynford. “It is as good as a play to hear her. If you are not beautiful in body, my darling, you are beautiful in your spirit. Yes, you have inherited from your proud English father lots of gold and a lovely castle, and all your relations will have to eat humble-pie to you; but you have got your spirit from me, Eve – don’t forget that.”

“Tell me about the Castle, mother, and about my father,” said Evelyn, nestling up close to her parent, as they sat by the roaring fire in the winter evenings.

Mrs. Wynford knew very little, and what she did know she exaggerated. She gave Evelyn vivid pictures, however, in each and all of which the principal figure was Evelyn herself – Evelyn claiming her rights, mastering her relations, letting her unknown cousin know that she, Evelyn, was the heiress, and that the cousin was nobody. Only one person in the group of Evelyn’s future relations did Mrs. Wynford counsel her to be civil to.

“The worst of it all is this, Eve,” she said – “while your uncle lives you do not own a pennypiece of the estate; and he may hold out for many a long day, so you had best be agreeable to him. Besides, he is like your father. Your father was a very handsome man and a very fine man, and I loved him, child. I took a fancy to him from the day he arrived at the ranch, and when he asked me to marry him I thought myself in rare good luck. But he died soon after you were born. Had he lived I’d have been the lady of the Castle, but I’d not go there without him, and you shall never go while I live.”

“I don’t want to, mother. You are more to me than twenty castles,” said the enthusiastic little girl.

Mrs. Wynford had one friend whom Evelyn tolerated and presently loved. That friend was a woman, partly of French extraction, who had come to stay at the ranch once during a severe illness of its owner. Her name was Jasper – Amelia Jasper; but she was known on the ranch by the title of Jasper alone. She was not a lady in any sense of the word, and did not pretend that she was one; but she was possessed of a certain strange fascination which she could exercise at will over those with whom she came in contact, and she made herself so useful to Mrs. Wynford and so necessary to Evelyn that she was never allowed to leave the ranch again. She soon obtained a great power over the curious, uneducated woman who was Evelyn’s mother; and when at last Mrs. Wynford found that she was smitten with an incurable disease, and that at any moment death would come to fetch her, she asked her dear friend Jasper to take the child to England.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said Jasper. “I’ll take Evelyn to England, and stay with her there.”

Mrs. Wynford laughed.

“You are clever enough, Jasper,” she said; “but what a figure of fun you would look in the grand sort of imperial residence that my dear late husband has described to me! You are not a lady, you know, although you are smart and clever enough to beat half the ladies out of existence.”

“I shall know how to manage,” said Jasper. “I, too, have heard of the ways of English grandees. I’ll be Evelyn’s maid. She cannot do without a maid, can she? I’ll take Evelyn back, and I will stay with her as her maid.”

Mrs. Wynford hailed this idea as a splendid one, and she even wrote a very badly spelt letter to Lady Frances, which Jasper was to convey and deliver herself, if possible, to her proud ladyship, as the widow called her sister-in-law. In this letter Mrs. Wynford demanded that Jasper was to stay with Evelyn as long as Evelyn wished for her, and she finally added:

“I dare you, Lady Frances, fine lady as you are, to part the child from her maid.”

When Mrs. Wynford died Evelyn gave way to the most terrible grief. She refused to eat; she refused to leave her mother’s dead body. She shrieked herself into hysterics on the day of the funeral, and then the poor little girl was prostrated with nervous fever. Finally, she became so unwell that it was impossible for her to travel to England for some months. And so it happened that nearly a year elapsed between the death of the mother and the arrival of the child at Castle Wynford.

CHAPTER IV. – “I DRAW THE LINE AT UNCLE NED.”

“Well, Jasper,” said Evelyn in a very eager voice to her maid that first night, “and how do you like it all?”

“How do you like it, Evelyn?” was the response.

“That is so like you, Jasper!” replied the spoilt little girl. “When all is said and done, you are not a scrap original. You make me like you – I cannot help myself – but in some ways you are too cautious to please me. You don’t want to say what you think of the place until you know my opinion. Well, I don’t care; I’ll tell you out plump what I think of everything. The place is horrid, and so are the people. I wish – oh! I wish I was back again on the ranch with mother.”

Jasper looked down rather scornfully at the small girl, who, in a rich and elaborately embroidered dressing-gown, was kneeling by the fire. Evelyn’s handsome eyes, the only really good feature she possessed, were fixed full upon her maid’s face.

“The Castle is too stiff for me,” she said, “and too – too airified and high and mighty. Mother was quite right when she spoke of Castle Wynford. I don’t care for anybody in the place except Uncle Ned. I don’t know how I shall live here. Oh Jasper, don’t you remember the evenings at home? Cannot you recall that night when Whitefoot was ill, and you and mothery and I had to sit up all through the long hours nursing her, and how we thought the dear old moo-cow would die! Don’t you remember the mulled cider and the gingerbread and the doughnuts and the apple-rings? How we toasted the apple-rings by the fire, and how they spluttered, and how good the hot cider was? And don’t you remember how mothery sang, and how you and I caught each other’s hands and danced, and dear old Whitefoot looked up at us with her big, sorrowful eyes? It is true that she died in the morning, but we had a jolly night. We’ll never have such times any more. Oh, I do wish my own mothery had not died and gone to heaven! Oh, I do wish it – I do!”

Evelyn crossed her arms tightly on her breast and began to sway herself backwards and forwards. Tears streamed from her eyes; she did not attempt to wipe them away.

“Now then, it is my turn to speak,” said Jasper. “I tell you what it is, Eve; you are about the biggest goose that was ever born in this world. Who would compare that stupid, rough old ranch with this lovely, magnificent house? And it is your own, Eve – or rather it will be your own. I took a good stare at the Squire, and I do not believe he will live to be very old; and whenever he dies you are to take possession – you and I together, Eve love – and out will go her ladyship, and out will go proud Miss Audrey. That will be a fine day, darling – a day worth living for.”

“Yes,” said Evelyn slowly; “and then we’ll alter things. We’ll make the Castle something like the ranch. We’ll get over some of our friends, and they shall live in the house. Mr. and Mrs. Petrie, who keep the egg-farm not a mile from the ranch, and Mr. Thomas Longchamp and Pete and Dick and Tom and Michael. I told them all when I was going away that when I was mistress of the Castle they should come, and we’ll go on much as we went on at the ranch. If mothery up in heaven can see me she will be glad. But, Jasper, why do you speak in that scornful way of my cousin Audrey? I think she is very beautiful. I think she is quite the most beautiful girl I have ever looked at. As to her being stately, she cannot help being stately. I wish I could walk like her, and talk like her, and speak like her; I do, Jasper – I do really.”

“Let me see,” said Jasper in a contemplative tone. “You are learning to love her, ain’t you?”

“I don’t love easily. I love my own darling mothery, who is not dead at all, for she is in heaven with father; and I love you, Jasper, and my uncle Edward.”

“My word! and why him?”

“I cannot help it; I love him already, and I’ll love him more and more the longer I see him and the more I know him. My father must have been like that – a gentleman – a perfect gentleman. Oh! I was happy at the ranch, and mothery was like no one else on the wide earth, but it gave me a sort of quiver down my spine when Uncle Edward took my hand, and when he kissed me. He is like what father was. Had father lived I’d have spent all my days here, and I’d have been perhaps quite as graceful as Audrey, and nearly as beautiful.”

“You will never be like her, so you need not think it. You are squat like your mother, and you ain’t got a decent feature in your face except your eyes, and even they are only big, not dark; and your hair is skimpy and your face white. You are a sort of mix’um-gather’um – a sort of betwixt-and-between – neither very fair nor very dark, neither very short nor very tall. You are thick-set, just the very image of your mother, and you will always be thick-set and always mix’um-gather’um as long as you live. There! I have spoken. I ain’t going to be afraid of you. You had better get into bed now, for it is late. You want your beauty-sleep, and you won’t get it unless you are quick. Now march! Put on your night-dress and step into bed.”

“I have got to say my prayers first,” said Evelyn, “and – ” She paused and looked full at her maid. “I have got to say something else. If you talk like that I won’t love you any more. You are not to do it. I won’t have it.”

“Won’t she, then?” said Jasper. Her whole manner changed. “And have I hurt her – have I – the little dear? Come to me, my darling. Why, you are all trembling! Did you think I meant a word I said? Don’t you know that you are the jewel of my eyes and the core of my heart and all the rest? Did your mother leave you to me for nothing, and would I ever leave you, sweetest and best? And if it is squat you are, there is no one like you for determination and fire of spirit. Eh, now, come to my arms and I’ll rock the bitterness out of you, for it is puzzled you are, and fretted you are, and you shall not be – no, you shall not be either one or the other ever again while old Jasper lives.”

Evelyn’s eyes, which had flashed an almost ugly fire, now softened. She looked at Jasper as if she meant to resist her. Then she wavered, and came almost totteringly across the room, and the next moment the strange woman had clasped the girl to her embrace and was rocking her backwards and forwards, Evelyn’s head lying on her breast just as if she were a baby.

“Now then, that’s better,” said Jasper. “I’ll undress you as though we were back again on the ranch, and when you are snug and safe in your little white bed we’ll have a bit of fun.”

“Fun!” said Evelyn. “What?”

“Don’t you know how you like a stolen supper? I have got chocolate here, and a little pot, and a jug of cream, and a saucepan, and I’ll make a rich cup for you and another for myself; and here’s a box of cakes, all sorts and very good. While you are sipping your chocolate I’ll take off Miss Audrey and Lady Frances for you. The door is locked; no one can see us. We’ll be as snug as snug can be, and we’ll have our fun just as if we were back at the ranch.”

Evelyn was now all laughter and high spirits. She had no idea of restraining herself. She called Jasper her honey and her honey-pot, and kissed the good woman several times. She superintended the making of the chocolate with eager words and many directions. Finally, a cup of the rich beverage was handed to her, and she sipped it, luxuriously curled up against her snowy pillows, and ate the sweet cakes, and watched Jasper with happy eyes.

“So it is Miss Audrey you’d like to take after?” said Jasper. “You think you are not a patch on her. To be sure not – wait and we’ll see.”

In an instant Jasper had transformed her features to a comical resemblance of Audrey’s. She spoke in mincing tones, with just sufficient likeness to Audrey to cause Evelyn to scream with mirth. She took light, quick steps across the room, and imitated Audrey’s very words. All of a sudden she changed her manner. She now resembled Miss Sinclair, putting on the slightly precise language of the governess, adjusting her shoulders and arranging her hands as she had seen Miss Sinclair do for a brief moment that evening. Her personation of Miss Sinclair was as good as her personation of Audrey, and Evelyn became so excited that she very nearly spilt her chocolate. But her crowning delight came when all of a sudden, without the slightest warning, Jasper became Lady Frances herself. She now sailed rather than walked across the apartment; her tones were stately and slow; her manner was the sort which might inspire awe; her very words were those of Lady Frances. But the delighted maid believed that she had a further triumph in store, for, with a quick change of mien, she now had the audacity to personate the Squire himself; but in one instant, like a flash, Evelyn was out of bed. She put down her chocolate-cup and rushed towards Jasper.

“The others as much as you like,” she said, “but not Uncle Ned. You dare not. You sha’n’t. I’ll turn you away if you do. I’ll hate you if you do. The others over and over again – they are lovely, splendid, grand – it puts heart in me to see you – but not Uncle Ned.”

Jasper looked in astonishment at the little girl.

“So you love him as much as that already?” she said. “Well, as you please, of course.”

“Don’t be cross, Jasper,” said Evelyn. “I can stand all the others; I can even like them. I told Audrey to-night how splendidly you can mimic, and you shall mimic her to her face when I know her better. Oh, it is killing – it is killing! But I draw the line at Uncle Ned.”