Page:The Semi-attached Couple.djvu/271

 marriage of his parents, and Alfred, father of the present Lord Teviot. Lord Robert and Lord Alfred both died young, and on the death of Henry, Lord Teviot, the title and estates passed to the heir presumptive, Lord Alfred's son. Henry Lorimer now asserted that he had only recently discovered that his parents were married some months before his birth, and in proof of this, he produced a certificate of the marriage of Lord Robert Lorimer to Emma Scot, in January 18—, and a registry of the birth of their son, Henry Lorimer, in the following August. He could not undertake to explain why he had not at once succeeded to the title on his uncle's death, but Lord Robert was on bad terms with his two brothers, owing to the disreputable connection he had made; and he had probably never informed them that it had ended in a marriage. Both parents had died nearly at the same time; he had been left, when only three years old, to some of his mother's relations; and he affirmed that it was only on the recent death of the old aunt who had taken charge of him that he had found the certificate of his mother's marriage.

All this sounded plausible enough; but Lord Beaufort wrote in good spirits, and said that the lawyers were sanguine, and that there had already been two or three faint offers of a compromise, which confirmed them in the idea that Mr. Lorimer had but a weak case, and that they were waiting impatiently for Lord Teviot's return to London, when he would probably be able to direct them in their search for family papers, and to point out old servants or friends of the family, whose evidence would be important.

So Helen sometimes took a very obstinate line of disbelief, at others she would try to make Lord Teviot laugh by the plans she proposed to execute, if they were reduced to poverty, which she of course represented as extreme, Lord Teviot digging and ploughing for his life, and she cooking and ironing for hers, in a picturesque brown stuff