up by sin and cruel wrong to others, will bring no good or happiness to you or any of his house. I fear—and yet because I hate Charles Craike, and I would punish him, and bring his sins to nothing, I’d have you go. Believing that you will avenge your father, and come again to me; believing Heaven wills it so!”

p. 44

p. 45Chapter V. The Journey Begun

p. 45

By break of day a week thence I waited by the highway for the coach and pair which should carry me with Mr. Bradbury up to London. My mind was yet confused for the swiftness of events. My mother, after her first outburst on the evening of Mr. Bradbury’s second visit, had become secretive; she whose life had seemed to me so open and simple, had grown inscrutable; she would satisfy me fully on none of the matters of most concern to me. This much I gathered—that I was John Craike, son of Richard Craike, who had passed by the name of Howe; that my grandfather was possessed of considerable means, and that for greed of this Charles Craike, my uncle, had plotted against his brother, bringing about his disappearance from England, if not his death. I believed that my mother at the time of her marriage had held some menial position in the service of Mrs. Charles Craike; that the match had excited bitter opposition from the Craike family, and that my father and she had been wedded secretly, and had lived under her p. 46name in London, fearing Charles Craike and his hostility. And that she had found from the first the hand of Charles Craike in the disappearance of her husband, and had fled away to live at Chelton through her concern for me and the enmity of Charles.

p. 46

But of my grandfather’s fortune—“ill-gotten,” she named it,—and of “the doomed house,” she would say no more; her secrecy hung like a shadow over us for that last week of mine at Chelton. She went quietly about her preparations for my journey, refusing to listen to my appeals that I should stay with her; insisting that, if I loved her, I should give myself wholly into Mr. Bradbury’s hands. “For,” she said, “I believe in him—nay, I know him for a friend of yours and mine. And he has great influence with your grandfather, and will insure your safe return to me.” Only from all the week of wondering and doubts unanswered I realised the bitterness of her spirit toward Charles Craike, and the keenness of her desire that I, as only son of the elder son, should come between him and the inheritance for which he had planned; this hate of him and this desire for his 

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