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Mead was waiting there, cap in hand.

“Miss Farday?” he inquired.

“Yes,” Ruth acknowledged. “Mrs. Emery says you have a message for me.”

“A request from the Squire,” he said. “He would deem it a great favour if you would come over to the Hall as soon as you can find time to spare. He asked me to point out to you that it was a matter of great importance, and that, had he been able, he would have called upon you himself.”

Ruth’s forehead puckered in a frown.

“I really can’t see what the Squire can have to say to me,” she said. “We—I can’t think of any matter of great importance that we might have to discuss—now.”

“I can assure you, Miss Farday, it must be of quite genuine importance—to the Squire, at least. He was most anxious that you should oblige him, and I know that he would have come himself had he been able to walk even a few yards,” Mead explained.

Ruth considered.

“You’ve no idea what he wants?” she asked.

“None whatever,” Mead replied.

Ruth made a decision which, she told herself afterwards, was against her better judgment.

“I’ll come,” she said, glancing at the clock. “It’s too late tonight, but I will walk over to-morrow morning.”

“Thank you,” Mead said, and bowed himself out.

Ruth went through the remainder of that evening with mixed feelings. She had blamed the Squire for much that had happened in the past, and she could not imagine what he could possibly want with her now. She had been tempted to refuse to make the journey to the Hall, and once or twice before ten o’clock the following morning she was on the point of sending Will Finberry across the dunes with a message to say that she was sorry she couldn’t keep the appointment after all. At the last minute, however, she made up her mind to go and find out what it was exactly that the Squire wanted.

She passed up the tree-lined drive to Carbay Hall with a queer feeling of self-consciousness. She had never been to the Hall before.

Mead opened the great door in response to her ring and ushered her directly into the Squire’s presence.

It was the first time Ruth had seen Alric Veycourt, and she found herself thinking that he looked very much as she had imagined him. Alert grey eyes swept over her appraisingly as he indicated a chair near his own.

“Sit down, won’t you, Miss Farday,” he invited. “I’m afraid I can’t get up to offer you a chair, but I have been suffering rather badly from gout lately and it is an effort to move.” He looked down at the swollen foot resting on the small brocaded foot stool before him. “Old age has many drawbacks!” he remarked, with a smile that Ruth thought transfigured his rather stern face.

She took the proffered chair and turned to face him.

“You wanted to see me?”

“Yes, Miss Farday,” he said, and then came to the point with characteristic straightforwardness. “First of all, I want you to know that Conningscliff would never have been sold over your head if I had had any hint of the truth.”

“About my father, do you mean?” Ruth asked rather stiffly.

“Yes. I don’t get about very much.” He nodded again towards the useless foot. “I have to depend upon other people for my information about what is going on outside. If I had known about your father before the sale of the farm went through, I would not have parted with Conningscliff even at the tempting price I was offered.”

Ruth’s fingers tightened their grip on the arm of her chair.

“I—understood that Conningscliff went very cheaply.”

“On the contrary,” Alric Veycourt told her, “it was the easiest and most satisfactory deal I ever made. I trust the new owner will allow you to continue your Guest House.”

“I think he will.”

Ruth was conscious of speaking with an effort. The news the Squire had just imparted was a great shock, but it was a shock which sent the blood flooding into her cheeks and a sense of shame to her heart. She might have known that John Travayne would not have done anything as underhand as Edmund Hersheil had insinuated—she might have believed in John! She could see everything so plainly now, but she did not wholly blame the Squire’s nephew. Her own faith and trust in Travayne had been a poor mockery of her love when she had been ready to believe the first accusation brought against him. How easily she had permitted pride to weight the balance on the wrong side!

“Mr. Travayne has agreed to let us stay at Conningscliff for the present,” she said at last.

“Travayne! Travayne, did you say?”

Alric Veycourt leaned forward in his seat as if, in his excitement, he would rise, but a stab of pain from his foot sent him back among the cushions again.

“Oh!” Ruth cried. “Is there anything the matter?”

The Squire’s, mouth relaxed in a smile.

“Only,” he said, “that I believe you are talking about my son!”

Ruth had risen to her feet and was bending over his chair, but at the last revelation she drew back, gazing at him dumbly as if she could not bring herself to believe what she had just heard.

“You say the boy bought the place?” Alric Veycourt continued. There was a dry chuckle in his voice, and he went on without waiting for her reply. “That was just like him! Like any Veycourt worthy of his salt! He was always a determined young devil, and he wanted Conningscliff right from the start. Now he owns the place!” The Squire laughed again. “Bought it right under my very nose, the young scoundrel!”

“Are you trying to tell me that—that John Travayne is your son?” Ruth asked huskily.

“I’m pretty sure of it,” Veycourt declared. “That is why I sent for you.”

“How can I help?”

Ruth was still not quite sure that this was not a dream from which she must wake at any moment.

“I thought you could help me to find him—and bring him back here to Carbay Hall where he belongs,” the Squire said. “So many things that Monset tells me, convince me that my son has been staying under your roof at Conningscliff—has bought the place, in fact!”

Ruth sat back in her seat, her fingers suddenly relaxing their hold on the arms of the chair. The Squire’s son! John was the real heir to Carbay Hall. She could not believe it at first, and yet many things she had noticed during his visits to the Guest House appeared now as confirmation of the truth of Alric Veycourt’s statement: John’s unexplained familiarity with the district right from that first visit to Windmill Hill at Easter; the many occasions on which she had found him in idle contemplation of the distant Hall; his disinclination to mix with the Carbay villagers—a dozen pointers to the truth the Squire was telling her now!

“But—he called himself Travayne,” she objected.

“No doubt he changed his name when he went abroad,” the old man told her, with a slight catch in his voice. “He must have preferred to take his mother’s name.” He leaned forward in his chair again. “And now, Miss Farday, I believe you can tell me where I can find my son.”

“I can’t—I’m sorry.”

The confession left Ruth’s lips automatically. She was almost too dazed to think.

“But I understood from Monset that he stayed at your Guest House for some considerable time?”

“Yes—he did,” Ruth acknowledged, “but he left without giving me his address. I have no idea where he is now.”

Words were being forced from between her dry lips, and a feeling of utter futility possessed her, as she realised that it was through her own stupidity that there was no definite way of tracing John Travayne—John Veycourt! Strange how difficult it was to think of him as that!

She could not think of him as the Squire’s heir somehow, and yet it seemed that it was true enough. Then thoughts of Conningscliff and her father brought with them the memory of all John had done for them and that last note of his. There had not been an address on the single sheet of notepaper, but it proved that John had been in Newcastle the morning before. Then there was Philip Kelwyn! Her brain was beginning to clear at last. Kelwyn would know where to find John.

“I think I may be able to help you,” she told Alric Veycourt. “Mr. Travayne—your son introduced us to a friend of his—a

London surgeon—who is to perform an operation on my father sometime during the next few days. He may know your son’s present address.”

Glancing at the little clock which had been ticking those important minutes away, she rose to her feet.

“I’m going to Newcastle this afternoon to see my father,” she said. “I will do all I can to get you the address.”

Veycourt had been studying her closely during that last nervous little speech, and he held out his hand to her.

“My dear,” he said, “I can only thank you, at present.”

Before she could restrain the impulse, Ruth had bent over and kissed his thin cheek.

“I will do my best,” she promised.

Out in the drive once more, with the wind from the sea fanning her hot cheeks, she felt that she could think more clearly. The news of John’s real identity had left a vague pain deep down in her heart which she could not bring herself to name, but it seemed that the news had set up another barrier between them. She tried to tell herself that she should be glad for his sake, and be glad, too, that it might yet lie in her power to trace him and effect the reconciliation the Squire desired so much. She did not doubt that John must desire it, too.

Quite naturally from this thought came thoughts of Edmund Hersheil. What would become of him? Before she could form any conjecture, however, she saw him driving towards her as she stepped into the road before the gates. He had driven the car round from the back entrance, and Ruth had the impression that he would have passed her had she not been immediately in his path. He slowed down with evident reluctance, and she noted subconsciously that there were two hide suitcases in the tonneau of the car. He glanced quickly at the lodge house before he spoke.

“Sorry I can’t give you a lift,” he said, “but I’m in rather a hurry. There’s—I’ve got some business to attend to in Newcastle.” He was in a hurry, but he was still anxious enough to know what Ruth was doing at the Hall. “Have you been trying to interest my uncle in your Guest House, Ruth?” he asked.

Ruth found her voice at last.

“Don’t trouble about your inability to run me home,” she said. “I prefer to walk, I assure you.”

“The same old Ruth!” His voice had a forced note about it. “Well, I must hurry.
Au revoir!”

The dust of the road flew up in a cloud from the wheels as the car gathered speed and disappeared over the first rise. Ruth watched it go, wondering how she had been able to refrain from telling its owner all she thought of him. Perhaps, she mused, it was because she had so many other—and more important— things to think of just now!

She was nearing Conningscliff before it occurred to her that Edmund Hersheil had been heading northwards when he had deliberately gone out of his way to tell her he had business in Newcastle, which lay to the south.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Keyed up as it was over her father’s coming ordeal, Ruth’s mind was a patchwork of conflicting thoughts as she sat back in her corner of the ’bus which would take her to Newcastle. All she had heard at the Hall that morning crowded into the forefront of her brain, and John Travayne’s real identity seemed to shut out everything else for the moment. She had promised the Squire to find him, and as soon as she had seen her father, she must make an effort to do so. She was quite confident that Philip Kelwyn was her key to the situation, and the long journey by road appeared doubly tedious as she watched the minutes ticking away on the little clock behind the driver’s cabin.

When they approached the town a thin rain was falling and the sky was leaden. The sun, which had gilded the countryside north of Alnwick, had disappeared behind a pall of cloud.

Ruth got off at the end of Jesmond Road and walked half the length of it to Parknor Crescent. The Renton Nursing Home was almost at the top, and her steps quickened to a run as she reached the heavy iron gate. She pushed it open and walked up the short, paved pathway to the front door. Her heart seemed to be beating madly somewhere near her throat as she rang the bell.

A maid opened the door and Ruth followed her into the waiting-room.

“Matron will be down in a moment.”

The girl disappeared, and Ruth sat down at the round table which occupied the centre of the room. There was a pile of magazines on the table, but she did not touch them.

When the matron arrived ten minutes later, she was standing at the window.

“Ah—Miss Farday! So you are here, at last!” The elderly, grey-haired matron smiled across at her.

“My father?” Ruth asked. “Has he been anxious?”

The matron came across the room and drew a chair towards her visitor.

“Miss Farday, your father was operated upon this morning,” she said.

Ruth tried to speak, but she could only lean forward and grasp the matron’s sleeve.

“Don’t upset yourself,” the kindly voice went on. “Everything’s going to be all right. It was your father’s wish, my dear. He wanted to spare you all the anxiety he could—all the waiting hours, and the uncertainty.”

“Oh—!”

“It was fortunate that your father made such a decision, as it happens,” the matron continued. “Mr. Kelwyn performed the operation at ten this morning, and he received a wire this afternoon calling him back to London.”