The Will and the Way by Bernard Capes — Read

Le Strang left Queen Charlotte's Mansions conscious of a curious ferment in his mind, which he strove hard, though not quite successfully, to subdue. His position in this matter was, he told himself, an entirely detached one, since he had negotiated the transfer which was to shift all further responsibility from his shoulders. And so the matter ended for him, and in a day or two he would be free to go about his own affairs as independently as if no dying friend had ever imposed a solemn trust upon him. Which was all as it should be--yet, was he in his heart quite satisfied to leave things thus? And did his obligations fairly end with this apparently successful termination to his mission? The heiress was patently--and, indeed, he had been led to expect no less--a spoilt and self-willed young woman, in whom an impulse to duty might represent no more than the sunshine of a passing mood. Supposing she were to tire of her accepted task, to end by neglecting the child, or by transferring in her turn his custody to alien hands? Were that for him, Le Strang, to keep, according to the spirit, or merely the letter, the promise exacted of him by the father?

He had loved William Grenville. Something buoyant and brilliant in the man, asserting itself through all that temperamental baseness, had caught at his heart. It was the tenderness of the strong for the weak--the stonewall lending itself to the clinging of the ivy. That strength, he decided, must justify the trust reposed in it, through life and the after memory of life. No--he must not yet loose his hold on the fortunes of poor Will's child.