CHAPTER IX.

OH, but it was a blow for Bootles! To find he had been duped, tricked, made a fool of all this time; to remember the anxiety, the trouble, the expense to which he had been put; nay, to recall the chaff he had endured, and then to discover that Miss Mignon was Gilchrist’s child—the child of the man he went perhaps nearer to hating than any one he had ever known in all his life! Everything came back to him then—the dead man’s jibes and sneers and taunts, his unwearied efforts to tax him with an offence which he knew he had not committed. And though he had failed in that, oh, what a fool Gilchrist had made of him! That was the sting Bootles felt most of anything.

For hours after he left the anteroom Bootles kept out of every one’s way—indeed until Lacy came to tell him that Gilchrist was dead. Then, it being close upon the hour of eleven, he went and knocked at the door of Mignon’s nursery. The nurse opened it a few inches, and seeing who it was, set it open wide.

“Is Miss Mignon asleep?” he asked.

“Yes, sir; hours ago,” the woman answered.

He passed into the inner room, where the child was lying. A candle burned on a table beside the cot, casting its light on the fair baby face, now flushed in sleep, and on the tangled golden curls. Both her arms lay outside the eider coverlet, one hand grasping the whip with which he had ridden and won that day, the other holding the card of the races. Bootles bent and scanned her face closely, but not one trace could he discern of likeness to the father—not one—and he drew a deep breath of relief that it was so.

Well he remembered Lacy’s puzzled scrutiny of the year-old baby. “There’s a likeness, but I don’t know where to plant it.” If there had been a likeness to Gilchrist then, it had now passed away; and as Bootles satisfied himself that it was so, his love for her, which during the last few hours had hung trembling in the balance, though he would hardly have acknowledged it, even to himself, re-asserted itself, and rose up in his heart stronger than ever. Just then she moved uneasily in her sleep.

“Lal, where _is_ Bootles?” she asked. Then, after a pause, “Gotted _another_ headache?” And an instant later, “Miss Grace said Mignon was to be very kind to Bootles.”

Bootles bent down and kissed her, and she awoke.

“Bootles,” she said, in sleepy surprise; then, imperatively, “Take me up.”

So Bootles carried her to the fire in the adjoining room, where the nurse was sewing a fresh frill of lace on the pretty velvet frock, with its braidings of scarlet and gold, which she had worn that day.

“Lal said Mignon wasn’t to go to Bootles,” she said, reproachfully.

“Bootles has been bothered, Mignon,” he answered.

“Poor Bootles!” stroking his cheek with her soft hand. “Bootles was vexed; Lal said so. But not with Mignon. Mignon told Lal so,” confidently.

“Never with Mignon,” answered Bootles, resting his cheek against the tossed golden curls, and feeling as if he had done this faithful baby heart a moral injustice by his hours of anger and doubt.

There was a moment of silence, broken by the nurse. “Have you heard, sir, how Mr. Gilchrist is?” she asked.

Bootles roused himself. “He is dead, nurse. Died half an hour ago.”

“Then, if you please, sir,” she asked, hesitatingly, “might I ask if it is true about Miss Mignon?”

“Yes, it is true,” his face darkening.

“Because, sir, Miss Mignon should have mourning,” she began, when Bootles cut her short.

“I shall not allow her to wear mourning for Mr. Gilchrist,” he said, curtly; so the nurse dared say no more.

Three days later the funeral took place; and if the facts of the dead man’s having acknowledged Miss Mignon as his child, and having admitted to Bootles that he had transferred her that night from his own quarters to Bootles’s rooms, created a sensation, it was as nothing to the intense surprise caused by the will, which was read, by the dead man’s desire, before all the officers of the regiment.

In it he left his entire property to his daughter, Mary Gilchrist, now in the care of Captain Ferrers, and commonly known as Mignon, on condition that Captain Ferrers consented to be her sole guardian and trustee until she had attained the age of twenty-one, or until her marriage, provided it should be with her guardian’s sanction, and on the express understanding that Captain Ferrers should not give up the care of the child to her mother, even temporarily. To his wife, Helen Gilchrist, a copy of this testament was to be sent forthwith. Should any of the conditions be violated, the whole property of which he died possessed should go to his cousin, Lucian Gavor Gilchrist; but if the conditions be faithfully observed Captain Ferrers should have the power of applying any, or all, of the income arising from the estate for the use and maintenance of the said Mary Gilchrist.

“Cwrazy!” murmured Lacy to Bootles, who listened in contemptuous silence, and wondered in no small dismay what kind of a life he should have if Mignon’s mother chose to make herself objectionable.

But the will was not crazy at all; far from it. It was only a very cleverly thought-out plan for keeping mother and child apart. Bootles would take care not to endanger Mignon’s inheritance, and Gilchrist had taken advantage of it to carry out his animosity towards his wife to the bitter end.

But of course there was one contingency he had never thought of or provided for—_marriage_.

It was less than a week after Gilchrist’s death that Bootles received a note by hand, signed Helen Gilchrist.

“Already!” he groaned, impatiently.

“May I trouble you to send the child to see me for half an hour during this afternoon?” she said, and that was all.

But Bootles did not see sending the child to be quietly stolen away. He forgot quite that since Gilchrist had not left his widow a farthing she would probably be now no better able to provide for the child than she had been when compelled to cast her baby upon the father’s mercy. Therefore, immediately after lunch, he drove down to the hotel from which the note had been written. Yes; Mrs. Gilchrist was within—this way. And then—then—Bootles, with the child fast holding his hand, was shown into a room, and there they found—_Miss Grace_!

The truth flashed into his mind instantly. She rose hurriedly, and he saw that she was clad in black, but was not in widow’s dress. She fell upon her knees and almost smothered Mignon with kisses.

“Mignon! Mignon!” she cried.

“Mignon has been very kind to Bootles,” Mignon explained, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

“My Mignon! my baby!” the mother sobbed. Bootles watched them—the two things he loved best on earth.

“Have you nothing to say to me?” he asked at last.

“What shall I say?” She had risen from her knees, and now moved shyly away.

“You might say,” said Bootles, severely, “that you are very sorry that you, a married woman, deceived me and stole my heart away. You might say that, for one thing.”

“But I am not sorry,” cried Mignon’s mother, audaciously.

“Then you might take a leaf out of Mignon’s book, and say, as she says when I have a headache, ‘Mignon _loves_ Bootles.’”

[Picture: Bootles watched them—the two things he loved best on earth]

“I wreally do think,” remarked Lacy to the fellows, when the astounding news had been told and freely discussed, “that now we must let that poor, malicious, cwrooked-minded chap wrest in his gwrave in peace. Seems to me,” he continued, with his most reflective air, “that—er—Solomon was wright, and said a vewry wise thing, when he said, ‘Love laughs at locksmiths.’”

“Solomon!” cried a voice, amid a shout of laughter.

“Oh, wasn’t it Solomon?” questioned Lacy, mildly. “It’s of no consequence; some one said it. But only think of that poor devil spending his last moments wraising a barwrier to keep mother and child apart, and old Bootles fulfils all the conditions to the letter, and bwreaks them all in the spirit by—marwriage!”

* * * * *

THE END.