now,—­how was it now?  Could it still be done?  Then the whole thing might have been hidden, buried in darkness.  Now it was already in the mouths of all men.  But still, if these witnesses were made to disappear,—­if this woman herself by whom the charge was made would take herself away—­then the trial must be abandoned.  There would be a whispering of evil,—­or, too probably, the saying of evil without whispering.  A terrible injury would have been inflicted upon her and his boy;—­but the injury would be less than that which he now feared.

And there was present to him through all this a feeling that the money ought to be paid independently of the accusation brought against him.  Had he known at first all that he knew now,—­how he had taken their all from these people, and how they had failed absolutely in the last great venture they had made,—­he would certainly have shared their loss with them.  He would have done all that Crinkett had suggested to him when he and Crinkett were walking along the dike.  Crinkett had said that on receiving twenty thousand pounds he would have gone back to Australia, and would have taken a wife with him!  That offer had been quite intelligible, and if carried out would have put an end to all trouble.  But he had mismanaged that interview.  He had been too proud, too desirous not to seem to buy off a threatening enemy.  Now, as the trouble pressed itself more closely upon him,—­upon him and his Hester,—­he would so willingly buy off his enemy if it were possible!  ’They ought to have the money,’ he said to himself; ’if only I could contrive that it should be paid to them.’

One day as he was entering the house by a side door, Darvell the gardener told him that there was a gentleman waiting to see him.  The gentleman was very anxious to see him, and had begged to be allowed to sit down.  Darvell, when asked whether the gentleman was a gentleman, expressed an affirmative opinion.  He had been driven over from Cambridge in a hired gig, which was now standing in the yard, and was dressed, as Darvell expressed it, ‘quite accordingly and genteel.’  So Caldigate passed into the house and found the man seated in the dining-room.

‘Perhaps you will step into my study?’ said Caldigate.  Thus the two men were seated together in the little room which Caldigate used for his own purposes.

Caldigate, as he looked at the man, distrusted his gardener’s judgment.  The coat and hat and gloves, even the whiskers and head of hair, might have belonged to a gentleman; but not, as he thought, the mouth or the eyes or the hands.  And when the man began to speak there was a mixture of assurance and intended complaisance, an effected familiarity and an attempt at ease, which made the master of the house quite sure that his guest was not all that Darvell had represented.  The man soon told his story.  His name was Bollum, Richard Bollum, and he had connections with Australia;—­was largely concerned in