The Abandoned Bride by Edith Layton Page B

more,” the baron explained earnestly. “And who is there to guide him? At least I had you to set me straight when I was about to make a cake of myself in my youth, and you were not, strictly speaking, my father.”
    Ah, that episode still rankles, the older gentleman thought, but he only said calmly, “I did marry your mother.”
    “Devil take it, sir,” the baron muttered. “You know that’s not what I meant. I could not have had a better father than you had I ordered one up from the deity.”
    Ignoring his stepson’s embarrassment, the elder gentleman went on, as though musing aloud, “I have not thought of that incident in years. That young woman you were involved with was a pretty little creature, I quite sympathized with you. In fact, it was not her lack of birth that disturbed me at all. You know I don’t place much emphasis on social lineage, and neither should you. Why just think of the odd branches on your own family tree: the Spanish lady that Elizabethan rogue brought back from his travels, the moneylender’s daughter your wastrel Royalist ancestor wed, your great-grandmother who came from a humble cottage. They only strengthened the stock, you know. Weak links tend to crop up in those socially-pure inbred families. Why look at the Bryants, they go back to the Normans, without a misalliance, and they haven’t produced a chin for generations.”
    “Then why did you pay off my little filly to be rid of her?” the baron asked coolly, though his white cheeks had grown flushed during his stepfather’s discourse.
    “Ah, because, as you well know, she had more than no breeding, she had no heart, and no morals,” the older gentleman said. He paused and then asked quietly , “Does Robin’s light of love remind you of her? Then it’s no wonder you’ve become so exercised about it. Is she such a pretty little creature then?”
    “ No, ” said the "baron abruptly, “she is not. ” He paused and then added bitterly, “She is beautiful.”

 
    4
    The stagecoach driver was being extremely conscientious, or so at least one of his unhappy passengers thought. For the fellow seemed to be taking great care not to miss one rut or hollow in the road. Perhaps, Julia thought as she raised her hand again to secure her bonnet, he was doing some sort of audit for the government bureau in charge of public roads and it was h is duty to painstakingly record every deficiency in them. Then, when the coach lurched over a particularly deep depression, she clenched her teeth tightly to ensure that they did not rattle out of her head and left off thinking about the driver’s hidden motives and only prayed that her traveling cases were more securely anchored than their owner present l y was.
    When the coach had righted itself again, the fair-haired young woman attempted to do the same herself. Julia whispered a polite “Excuse me” to the matron on her left, who had taken most of her weight when the movement of the coach caused the passengers to sway like trees in a tempest. Then she bent and felt about the floorboards with her hands as her fellow passengers were doing, in an attempt to help the fellow immediately opposite her in his search for his dislodged spectacles.
    They had been riding without a stop for quite some time, and by now had exhausted all their expressions of ill-usage. Really, Julia thought wearily, as she accepted a curt “Thankee” from the fellow to whom she handed the wire-rimmed spectacles, there can be few more foolish situations than finding oneself packed into a coach in a random pair, sitting facing two other complete strangers, and then being shaken vigorously every few moments for endless hours. If one then added the effects of a sultry early summer’s day to the experience, Julia thought miserably, one could get the general impression of what one’s fate might be in the afterlife if one were very wicked in this one.
    She had been traveling for two full days now, and it seemed that even