An hour and a half afterwards Theodore and Aymer were en route to Stirmingham. Theodore had explained his sudden departure by a telegram. He had received a telegram, it was true, as he constantly did; but it was as usual a Stock Exchange report of no importance.
From the station Aymer sent a short note to Violet at Belthrop, by special messenger, acquainting her with his good fortune.
They reached Stirmingham the same evening, and next day Aymer was formally installed in possession of a bundle of papers, ledgers, and account books, which he was to balance up. He was shown the secretary’s residence—a fine house, closely adjoining the asylum—and at night he wrote a glowing letter to Violet, enclosing money to pay her fare first-class, and begging her to come at once.
On the second morning came a note telling him that she should start that very day, and full of joyful anticipations. She would arrive towards night. Aymer dined with Theodore, and took wine with him afterwards. Presently he rose to prepare to go to the railway and meet Violet. He reached his private room with a singular sensation in the head, a swimming in his eyes, and a dryness of the tongue. He plunged his face in cold water to recover himself; but it seemed to increase the disorder. His head seemed to swell to an enormous size, and yet to grow extremely light, till it felt like an inflated balloon, and seemed as if it would lift him to the ceiling. Sitting down to try and steady himself, he fancied that the chair rose in the air, and cried out in alarm. He managed to pull the bell, and then felt as if he was carried away to an immense distance, and could look down upon his body in the room beneath.
A servant answered the bell, who stared at him, smiled, and said—“Ah, your fit’s on at last.” Aymer’s last consciousness was that he was talking very fast, without exactly knowing what he was saying. After that there was a blank.
Meantime Violet was met by Theodore Marese at the railway station; and a message in cipher flew along the wires to a certain club in London. Marese Baskette breathed again, for the cipher read—“They are here.” A simple sentence, but enough.
IX
A fashionable London newspaper came out one morning with the statement that a marriage had been arranged in high life, and that preparations were already in progress. J. Marese Baskette, Esq., of Stirmingham, and Lady Agnes Lechester were to be shortly united in holy matrimony. This announcement was of the very greatest value to Marese. Not all the wealth, or reputed wealth he possessed—not even the honour of representing so important a city, could obtain for him the position in society which was secured by an alliance with the blue blood of Lechester. His money affairs wore at once a more roseate aspect.
It was well known that Lady Lechester owned large estates, and they were naturally reported to be even larger than they were. It was whispered abroad that, under careful nursing, certain incumbrances had been paid off, and that the rent-roll was now something extremely heavy even for England, the land of long rent-rolls.
People who had previously fought a little shy of the handsome heir, and asked hard terms to discount his paper, now pressed forward, and were anxious to obtrude their services. At the clubs, persons who had affected to ignore the richest man in the world as a matter of principle, on account of his ignoble descent, now began to acknowledge his existence, and to extend the tips of their aristocratic fingers. It was remembered that the doubts and difficulties which had beset his claim to the vast Stirmingham estate like a dark cloud, had of late in great part cleared away. The family council had “burst up,” and there were really no competitors in the field. Marese Baskette, Esq., in the course of a year or two, so soon as the law affairs could be settled, would be the richest man in the world.
At the clubs they freely discussed his wealth. When realised it would put the Rothschilds, and Coutts, and Barings, and all the other famous names—the Astors of New York and even the princes of India—into the shade.
Stirmingham, the busiest city in England, surrounded with a triple belt of iron furnaces, undermined with hundreds of miles of coal galleries, was it possible to estimate the value of that wonderful place? Why, the estate in the time of old Sternhold Baskette was roughly put at twenty millions sterling—that was thirty years ago or more—what must it be worth now? There really was no calculating it. Suppose he got but one quarter of what he was entitled to—say property worth only five millions—there was a fine thing. What on earth had the ladies been thinking of all these years that they had not secured so rich a prize?
Lady Lechester was not a little envied. County families and others, from whom she had kept aloof for years, overlooked the disrespect, and called upon her with their congratulations. Invitations poured in upon her; the whole county talked of nothing else but Lady Lechester’s wedding; even the great fire was forgotten.
In London circles the
