Happily the remaining words were few. "Your brother," he read, "till
death and after"--followed by a name and date.
At the name he stared fairly confounded. It meant nothing whatever to
him.--That is, at first. Then, rising as a vision from out some
subconscious drift of memory, he saw the cold, low-toned colouring of
wide, smooth and lonely waters, of salt-marsh, of mud-flat and reed-bed
in the lowering light of a late autumn afternoon--a grey, stone-built
tavern, moreover, above the open door of which, painted upon a board,
that same name of Faircloth figured above information concerning divers
liquors obtainable within. Yes--remembrance grew more precise and stable.
He recalled the circumstances quite clearly now. He had seen it on his
way back from a solitary afternoon's wild fowl shooting on Marychurch
Haven; during his last visit to Deadham Hard.
So much was certain. But the name in its present connection? Carteret's
imagination shied. For, to have the existence of an illegitimate son of
your oldest and dearest friend thus suddenly thrust upon you, and that by
a young lady of the dearest friend's family, is, to say the least of it,
a considerable poser for any man.
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