"Have you told them?"

"I have told no one but you. I have come down here to Cheltenham on purpose to tell you."

"Why me?" she said, as though struck with fear at such an a.s.sertion on his part.

"I must tell some one, and I have not known whom else to tell. His father appears not at all anxious about him. His brother I do not altogether trust. Were I to go to these men, who are only looking after their money, I should be communicating with his enemies. Your mother already regards me as his enemy. If I told the police I should simply be brought into a court of justice, where I should be compelled to mention your name."

"Why mine?"

"I must begin the story from the beginning. One night I was coming home in London very late, about two o'clock, when whom should I meet in the street suddenly but Mountjoy Scarborough. It came out afterward that he had then been gambling; but when he encountered me he was intoxicated.

He took me suddenly by the collar and shook me violently, and did his best to maltreat me. What words were spoken I cannot remember; but his conduct to me was as that of a savage beast. I struggled with him in the street as a man would struggle who is attacked by a wild dog. I think that he did not explain the cause of his hatred, though, of course, my memory as to what took place at that moment is disturbed and imperfect; but I did know in my heart why it was that he had quarrelled with me."

"Why was it?" Florence asked.

"Because he thought that I had ventured to love you."

"No, no!" shrieked Florence; "he could not have thought that."

"He did think so, and he was right enough. If I have never said so before, I am bound at any rate to say it now." He paused for a moment, but she made him no answer. "In the struggle between us he fell on the pavement against a rail;--and then I left him."

"Well?"

"He has never been heard of since. On the following day, in the afternoon, I left London for Buston; but nothing had been then heard of his disappearance. I neither knew of it nor suspected it. The question is, when others were searching for him, was I bound to go to the police and declare what I had suffered from him that night? Why should I connect his going with the outrage which I had suffered?"

"But why not tell it all?"

"I should have been asked why he had quarrelled with me. Ought I to have said that I did not know? Ought I to have pretended that there was no cause? I did know, and there was a cause. It was because he thought that I might prevail with you, now that he was a beggar, disowned by his own father."

"I would never have given him up for that," said Florence.

"But do you not see that your name would have been brought in,--that I should have had to speak of you as though I thought it possible that you loved me?" Then he paused, and Florence sat silent. But another thought struck him now. It occurred to him that under the plea put forward he would appear to seek shelter from his silence as to her name. He was aware how anxious he was on his own behalf not to mention the occurrence in the street, and it seemed that he was attempting to escape under the pretence of a fear that her name would be dragged in. "But independently of that I do not see why I should be subjected to the annoyance of letting it be known that I was thus attacked in the streets. And the time has now gone by. It did not occur to me when first he was missed that the matter would have been of such importance. Now it is too late."

"I suppose that you ought to have told his father."

"I think that I ought to have done so. But at any rate I have come to explain it all to you. It was necessary that I should tell some one.

There seems to be no reason to suspect that the man has been killed."

"Oh, I hope not; I hope not that."

"He has been spirited away--out of the way of his creditors. For myself I think that it has all been done with his father's connivance. Whether his brother be in the secret or not I cannot tell, but I suspect he is.

There seems to be no doubt that Captain Scarborough himself has run so overhead into debt as to make the payment of his creditors impossible by anything short of the immediate surrender of the whole property. Some month or two since they all thought that the squire was dying, and that there would be nothing to do but to sell the property which would then be Mountjoy's, and pay themselves. Against this the dying man has rebelled, and has come, as it were, out of the grave to disinherit the son who has already contrived to disinherit himself. It is all an effort to save Tretton."

"But it is dishonest," said Florence.

"No doubt about it. Looking at it any way it is dishonest, Either the inheritance must belong to Mountjoy still, or it could not have been his when he was allowed to borrow money upon it."

"I cannot understand it. I thought it was entailed upon him. Of course it is nothing to me. It never could have been anything."

"But now the creditors declare that they have been cheated, and a.s.sert that Mountjoy is being kept out of the way to aid old Mr. Scarborough in the fraud. I cannot but say that I think it is so. But why he should have attacked me just at the moment of his going, or why, rather, he should have gone immediately after he had attacked me, I cannot say. I have no concern whatever with him or his money, though I hope--I hope that I may always have much with you. Oh, Florence, you surely have known what has been within my heart."

To this appeal she made no response, but sat awhile considering what she would say respecting Mountjoy Scarborough and his affairs.

"Am I to keep all this a secret?" she asked him at last.

"You shall consider that for yourself. I have not exacted from you any silence on the matter. You may tell whom you please, and I shall not consider that I have any ground of complaint against you. Of course for my own sake I do not wish it to be told. A great injury was done me, and I do not desire to be dragged into this, which would be another injury.

I suspect that Augustus Scarborough knows more than he pretends, and I do not wish to be brought into the mess by his cunning. Whether you will tell your mother you must judge yourself."

"I shall tell n.o.body unless you bid me." At that moment the door of the room was opened, and Mrs. Mountjoy entered, with a frown upon her brow.

She had not yet given up all hope that Mountjoy might return, and that the affairs of Tretton might be made to straighten themselves.

"Mamma, Mr. Annesley is here."

"So I perceive, my dear."

"I have come to your daughter to tell her how dearly I love her," said Harry, boldly.

"Mr. Annesley, you should have come to me before speaking to my daughter."

"Then I shouldn't have seen her at all."

"You should have left that as it might be. It is not at all a proper thing that a young gentleman should come and address a young lady in this way behind her only parent's back."

"I asked for you, and I did not know that you would not be at home."

"You should have gone away at once--at once. You know how terribly the family is cut up by this great misfortune to our cousin Mountjoy.

Mountjoy Scarborough has been long engaged to Florence."

"No, mamma; no, never."

"At any rate, Mr. Annesley knows all about it. And that knowledge ought to have kept him away at the present moment. I must beg him to leave us now."

Then Harry took his hat and departed; but he had great consolation in feeling that Florence had not repudiated his love, which she certainly would have done had she not loved him in return. She had spoken no word of absolute encouragement, but there had much more of encouragement than of repudiation in her manner.

CHAPTER VII.

HARRY ANNESLEY GOES TO TRETTON.

Harry had promised to go down to Tretton, and when the time came Augustus Scarborough did not allow him to escape from the visit. He explained to him that in his father's state of health there would be no company to entertain him; that there was only a maiden sister of his father's staying in the house, and that he intended to take down into the country with him one Septimus Jones, who occupied chambers on the same floor with him in London, and whom Annesley knew to be young Scarborough's most intimate friend. "There will be a little shooting,"

he said, "and I have bought two or three horses, which you and Jones can ride. Cannock Chase is one of the prettiest parts of England, and as you care for scenery you can get some amus.e.m.e.nt out of that. You'll see my father, and hear, no doubt, what he has got to say for himself. He is not in the least reticent in speaking of my brother's affairs." There was a good deal in this which was not agreeable. Miss Scarborough was sister to Mrs. Mountjoy as well as to the squire, and had been one of the family party most anxious to a.s.sure the marriage of Florence and the captain. The late General Mountjoy had been supposed to be a great man in his way, but had died before Tretton had become as valuable as it was now. Hence the eldest son had been christened with his name, and much of the Mountjoy prestige still clung to the family. But Harry did not care much about the family except so far as Florence was concerned. And then he had not been on peculiarly friendly terms with Septimus Jones, who had always been submissive to Augustus; and, now that Augustus was a rich man and could afford to buy horses, was likely to be more submissive than ever.

He went down to Tretton alone early in September, and when he reached the house he found that the two young men were out shooting. He asked for his own room, but was instead immediately taken to the old squire, whom he found lying on a couch in a small dressing-room, while his sister, who had been reading to him, was by his side. After the usual greetings Harry made some awkward apology as to his intrusion at the sick man's bedside. "Why, I ordered them to bring you in here," said the squire; "you can't very well call that intrusion. I have no idea of being shut up from the world before they nail me down in my coffin."

"That will be a long time first, we all hope," said his sister.

"Bother! you hope it, but I don't know that any one else does;--I don't for one. And if I did, what's the good of hoping? I have a couple of diseases, either of which is enough to kill a horse." Then he mentioned his special maladies in a manner which made Harry shrink. "What are they talking about in London just at present?" he asked.