“I wish I had never come over,” said Sir Marmaduke.
“Why so?”
“They didn’t bother me with their new rules and fashions over there. When the papers came somebody read them, and that was enough. I could do what they wanted me to do there.”
“And so you will here—after a bit.”
“I’m not so sure of that. Those young fellows seem to forget that an old dog can’t learn new tricks. They’ve got a young brisk fellow there who seems to think that a man should be an encyclopedia of knowledge because he has lived in a colony over twenty years.”
“That’s the new undersecretary.”
“Never mind who it is. Osborne, just come up to the library, will you? I want to speak to you.” Then Sir Marmaduke, with considerable solemnity, led the way up to the most deserted room in the club, and Colonel Osborne followed him, well knowing that something was to be said about Emily Trevelyan.
Sir Marmaduke seated himself on a sofa, and his friend sat close beside him. The room was quite deserted. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and the club was full of men. There were men in the morning-room, and men in the drawing-room, and men in the card-room, and men in the billiard-room; but no better choice of a chamber for a conference intended to be silent and secret could have been made in all London than that which had induced Sir Marmaduke to take his friend into the library of “The Acrobats.” And yet a great deal of money had been spent in providing this library for “The Acrobats.” Sir Marmaduke sat for awhile silent, and had he sat silent for an hour, Colonel Osborne would not have interrupted him. Then, at last, he began, with a voice that was intended to be serious, but which struck upon the ear of his companion as being affected and unlike the owner of it. “This is a very sad thing about my poor girl,” said Sir Marmaduke.
“Indeed it is. There is only one thing to be said about it, Rowley.”
“And what’s that?”
“The man must be mad.”
“He is not so mad as to give us any relief by his madness—poor as such comfort would be. He has got Emily’s child away from her, and I think it will about kill her. And what is to become of her? As to taking her back to the islands without her child, it is out of the question. I never knew anything so cruel in my life.”
“And so absurd, you know.”
“Ah—that’s just the question. If anybody had asked me, I should have said that you were the man of all men whom I could have best trusted.”
“Do you doubt it now?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“Do you mean to say that you suspect me—and your daughter too?”
“No;—by heavens! Poor dear. If I suspected her, there would be an end of all things with me. I could never get over that. No; I don’t suspect her!” Sir Marmaduke had now dropped his affected tone, and was speaking with natural energy.
“But you do me?”
“No;—if I did, I don’t suppose I should be sitting with you here; but they tell me—”
“They tell you what?”
“They tell me that—that you did not behave wisely about it. Why could you not let her alone when you found out how matters were going?”
“Who has been telling you this, Rowley?”
Sir Marmaduke considered for awhile, and then remembering that Colonel Osborne could hardly quarrel with a clergyman, told him the truth. “Outhouse says that you have done her an irretrievable injury by going down to Devonshire to her, and by writing to her.”
“Outhouse is an ass.”
“That is easily said;—but why did you go?”
“And why should I not go? What the deuce! Because a man like that chooses to take vagaries into his head I am not to see my own godchild!” Sir Marmaduke tried to remember whether the Colonel was in fact the godfather of his eldest daughter, but he found that his mind was quite a blank about his children’s godfathers and godmothers. “And as for the letters;—I wish you could see them. The only letters which had in them a word of importance were those about your coming home. I was anxious to get that arranged, not only for your sake, but because she was so eager about it.”
“God bless her, poor child,” said Sir Marmaduke, rubbing the tears away from his eyes with his red silk pocket-handkerchief.
“I will acknowledge that those letters—there may have been one or two—were the beginning of the trouble. It was these that made this man show himself to be a lunatic. I do admit that. I was bound not to talk about your coming, and I told her to keep the secret. He went spying about, and found her letters, I suppose—and then he took fire because there was to be a secret from him. Dirty, mean dog! And now I’m to be told by such a fellow as Outhouse that it’s my fault, that I have caused all the trouble, because, when I happened to be in Devonshire, I went to see your daughter!” We must do the Colonel the justice of supposing that he had by this time quite taught himself to believe that the church porch at Cockchaffington had been the motive cause of his journey into Devonshire. “Upon my word it is too hard,” continued he indignantly. “As for Outhouse—only for the gown upon his back, I’d pull his nose. And I wish that you would tell him that I say so.”
“There is trouble enough without that,” said Sir Marmaduke.
“But it is hard. By G⸺, it is hard. There is this comfort;—if it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else. Such a man as that couldn’t have gone two or three years, without being jealous of someone. And as for poor Emily, she is better off perhaps with an accusation so absurd as this, than she might have been had her name been joined with a
