‘No,’ Mr. Thomasson answered, ’it is not public property.  But it is certain and it is true!’ Then, after a moment’s hesitation, ’I saw some papers—­by accident,’ he said, his eyes on the gallery.

‘Oh, d—­n your accident!’ Mr. Pomeroy cried brutally.  ’You are very fine to-night.  You were not used to be a Methodist!  Hang it, man, we know you,’ he continued violently, ’and this is not all!  This does not bring you and the girl tramping the country, knocking at doors at midnight with Cock-lane stories of chaises and abductions.  Come to it, man, or—­’

‘Oh, I say,’ Lord Almeric protested weakly.  ’Tommy is an honest man in his way, and you are too stiff with him.’

‘D—­n him! my lord; let him come to the point then,’ Mr. Pomeroy retorted savagely.  ‘Is she in the way to get the money?’

‘She is,’ said the tutor sullenly.

‘Then what brings her here—­with you, of all people?’

‘I will tell you if you will give me time, Mr. Pomeroy,’ the tutor said plaintively.  And he proceeded to describe in some detail all that had happened, from the fons et origo mali—­Mr. Dunborough’s passion for the girl—­to the stay at the Castle Inn, the abduction at Manton Corner, the strange night journey in the chaise, and the stranger release.

When he had done, ‘Sir George was the girl’s fancy-man, then?’ Pomeroy said, in the harsh overbearing tone he had suddenly adopted.

The tutor nodded.

‘And she thinks he has tricked her?’

‘But for that and the humour she is in,’ Mr. Thomasson answered, with a subtle glance at the other’s face, ’you and I might talk here till Doomsday, and be none the better, Mr. Pomeroy.’

His frankness provoked Mr. Pomeroy to greater frankness.  ’Consume your impertinence!’ he cried.  ‘Speak for yourself.’

‘She is not that kind of woman,’ said Mr. Thomasson firmly.

‘Kind of woman?’ cried Mr. Pomeroy furiously.  ’I am this kind of man.  Oh, d—­n you!  If you want plain speaking you shall have it!  She has fifty thousand, and she is in my house; well, I am this kind of man!  I’ll not let that money go out of the house without having a fling at it!  It is the devil’s luck has sent her here, and it will be my folly will send her away—­if she goes.  Which she does not if I am the kind of man I think I am.  So there for you!  There’s plain speaking.’

‘You don’t know her,’ Mr. Thomasson answered doggedly.  ’Mr. Dunborough is a gentleman of mettle, and he could not bend her.’

‘She was not in his house!’ the other retorted, with a grim laugh.  Then, in a lower, if not more amicable tone, ‘Look here, man,’ he continued, ’d’ye mean to say that you had not something of this kind in your mind when you knocked at this door?’

‘I!’ Mr. Thomasson cried, virtuously indignant.

’Ay, you!  Do you mean to say you did not see that here was a chance in a hundred?  In a thousand?  Ay, in a million?  Fifty thousand pounds is not found in the road any day?’