Chapter 17 - Page 2

smallest atom of sympathy on Lady Rachel's part.

"You are quite right--your deaf man was at his window when I went by. We recognized each other and had a long talk. If I remember correctly, he said you knew of his reasons for concealing his name. I gave my promise (being a matter of perfect indifference to me) to conceal it too. One thing led to another, and I discovered that you were his hated rival in the affections of Miss Toller. I proved worthy of his confidence in me. That is to say, I told him that Mrs. Roylake and I would be only too glad, as representing your interests, if he succeeded in winning the young lady. I asked if he had any plans. He said one of his plans had failed. What it was, and how it had failed, he did not mention. I asked if he could devise nothing else. He said, "Yes, if I was not a poor man." In my place, you would have offered, as I did, to find the money if the plan was approved of. He produced some manuscript story of an abduction of a lady, which he had written to amuse himself. The point of it was that the lover successfully carried away the lady, by means of a boat, while the furious father's attention was absorbed in watching the high road. It seemed to me to be a new idea. "If you think you can carry it out," I said, "send your estimate of expenses to me and Mrs. Roylake, and we will subscribe." We received the estimate. But the plan has failed, and the man is off. I am quite certain myself that Miss Toller has done what she promised to do. Wherever she may be now, she has sacrificed herself for your sake. When you have got over it, you will marry my sister. I wish you good morning."

Between Lady Rachel's hard insolence, and Mrs. Roylake's sentimental hypocrisy, I was in such a state of irritation that I left Trimley Deen the next morning, to find forgetfulness, as I rashly supposed, in the gay world of London.

I had been trying my experiment for something like three weeks, and was beginning to get heartily weary of it, when I received a letter from the lawyer.

"Dear Sir,

Your odd tenant, old Mr. Toller, has died suddenly of rupture of a blood-vessel on the brain, as the doctor thinks. There is to be an inquest, as I need hardly tell you. What do you say to having the report of the proceedings largely copied in the newspapers? If it catches his daughter's eye, important results may follow."

To speculate in this way on the impulse which might take its rise in my poor girl's grief--to surprise her, as it were, at her father's grave--revolted me. I directed the lawyer to take no steps whatever in the matter, and to pay the poor old fellow's funeral expenses, on my account. He had died intestate. The law took care of his money until his daughter appeared; and the mill, being my property, I gave to Toller's surviving partner--our good Gloody.

And what did I do next? I went away travelling;