“About your will?”

“No, not about my will at all.  That shall remain as it is.  I do not think I should have strength to make another will, nor do I wish to do so.”

“You mean about Merton?”

“I don’t mean about Merton at all.  Give him five hundred pounds, and he ought to be satisfied.  This is a matter of more importance than Mr. Merton—­or even than my will.”

“What is it?” said Mountjoy, in a tone of much surprise.

“I don’t think I can tell you now.  But it is right that you should know that Merton wrote, by my instructions, to Mr. Grey early this morning, and has implored him to come to Tretton once again.  There!  I cannot say more than that now.”  Then he turned round on his couch, as was his custom, and was unassailable.

CHAPTER LIV.

RUMMELSBURG.

Mr. Scarborough again sent for Mr. Grey, but a couple of weeks passed before he came.  At first he refused to come, saying that he would send his clerk down if any work were wanted such as the clerk might do.  And the clerk did come and was very useful.  But Mr. Scarborough persevered, using arguments which Mr. Grey found himself unable at last to resist.  He was dying, and there would soon be an end of it.  That was his strongest argument.  Then it was alleged that a lawyer of experience was certainly needed, and that Mr. Scarborough could not very well put his affairs into the hands of a stranger.  And old friendship was brought up.  And, then, at last, the squire alleged that there were other secrets to be divulged respecting his family, of which Mr. Scarborough thought that Mr. Grey would approve.  What could be the “other secrets?” But it ended in Mr. Grey assenting to go, in opposition to his daughter’s advice.  “I would have nothing more to do with him or his secrets,” Dolly had said.

“You do not know him.”

“I know as much about him as a woman can know of a man she doesn’t know,—­and all from yourself.  You have said over and over again that he is a ‘rascal!’”

“Not a rascal.  I don’t think I said he was a rascal.”

“I believe you used that very word.”

“Then I unsay it.  A rascal has something mean about him.  Juniper’s a rascal!”

“He cares nothing for his word.”

“Nothing at all,—­when the law is concerned.”

“And he has defamed his own wife.”

“That was done many years ago.”

“For a fixed purpose, and not from passion,” Dolly continued.  “He is a thoroughly bad man.  You have made his will for him, and now I would leave him.”  After that Mr. Grey declined for a second time to go.  But at last he was persuaded.

On the evening of his arrival he dined with Mountjoy and Merton, and on that occasion Miss Scarborough joined them.  Of course there was much surmise as to the cause of this farther visit.  Merton declared that, as he had acted as the sick man’s private secretary, he was bound to keep his secret as far as he knew it.  He only surmised what he believed to be the truth, but of that he could say nothing.  Miss Scarborough was altogether in the dark.  She, and she alone, spoke of her brother with respect, but in that she knew nothing.