“I cannot tell what it is,” said Mountjoy; “but I suspect it to be something intended for my benefit and for the utter ruin of Augustus.”  Miss Scarborough had now retired.  “If it could be possible, I should think that he intended to declare that all he had said before was false.”  To this, however, Mr. Grey would not listen.  He was very stout in denying the possibility of any reversion of the decision to which they had all come.  Augustus was, undoubtedly, by law his father’s eldest son.  He had seen with his own eyes copies of the registry of the marriage, which Mr. Barry had gone across the Continent to make.  And in that book his wife had signed her maiden name, according to the custom of the country.  This had been done in the presence of the clergyman and of a gentleman,—­a German, then residing on the spot, who had himself been examined, and had stated that the wedding, as a wedding, had been regular in all respects.  He was since dead, but the clergyman who had married them was still alive.  Within twelve months of that time Mr. Scarborough and his bride had arrived in England, and Augustus had been born.  “Nothing but the most indisputable evidence would have sufficed to prove a fact by which you were so cruelly wronged,” he said, addressing himself to Mountjoy.  “And when your father told me that no wrong could be done to you, as the property was hopelessly in the hands of the Jews, I told him that, for all purposes of the law, the Jews were as dear to me as you were.  I do say that nothing but the most certain facts would have convinced me.  Such facts, when made certain, are immovable.  If your father has any plot for robbing Augustus, he will find me as staunch a friend to Augustus as ever I have been to you.”  When he had so spoken they separated for the night, and his words had been so strong that they had altogether affected Mountjoy.  If such were his father’s intentions, it must be by some farther plot that he endeavored to carry it out:  and in his father’s plots he would put no trust whatever.

And yet he declared his own purpose as he discussed the matter, late into the night, with Merton.  “I cannot trust Grey at all, nor my father either, because I do not believe, as Grey believes, this story of the marriage.  My father is so clever, and so resolute in his purpose to set aside all control over the property as arranged by law, that to my mind it has all been contrived by himself.  Either Mr. Barry has been squared, or the German parson, or the foreign gentleman, or more probably all of them.  Mr. Grey himself may have been squared, for all I know, though he is the kindest-hearted gentleman I ever came across.  Anything shall be more probable to me than that I am not my father’s eldest son.”  To all this Mr. Merton said very little, though no doubt he had his own ideas.