“But why not tell it all?”

“I should have been asked why he had quarrelled with me.  Ought I to have said that I did not know?  Ought I to have pretended that there was no cause?  I did know, and there was a cause.  It was because he thought that I might prevail with you, now that he was a beggar, disowned by his own father.”

“I would never have given him up for that,” said Florence.

“But do you not see that your name would have been brought in,—­that I should have had to speak of you as though I thought it possible that you loved me?” Then he paused, and Florence sat silent.  But another thought struck him now.  It occurred to him that under the plea put forward he would appear to seek shelter from his silence as to her name.  He was aware how anxious he was on his own behalf not to mention the occurrence in the street, and it seemed that he was attempting to escape under the pretence of a fear that her name would be dragged in.  “But independently of that I do not see why I should be subjected to the annoyance of letting it be known that I was thus attacked in the streets.  And the time has now gone by.  It did not occur to me when first he was missed that the matter would have been of such importance.  Now it is too late.”

“I suppose that you ought to have told his father.”

“I think that I ought to have done so.  But at any rate I have come to explain it all to you.  It was necessary that I should tell some one.  There seems to be no reason to suspect that the man has been killed.”

“Oh, I hope not; I hope not that.”

“He has been spirited away—­out of the way of his creditors.  For myself I think that it has all been done with his father’s connivance.  Whether his brother be in the secret or not I cannot tell, but I suspect he is.  There seems to be no doubt that Captain Scarborough himself has run so overhead into debt as to make the payment of his creditors impossible by anything short of the immediate surrender of the whole property.  Some month or two since they all thought that the squire was dying, and that there would be nothing to do but to sell the property which would then be Mountjoy’s, and pay themselves.  Against this the dying man has rebelled, and has come, as it were, out of the grave to disinherit the son who has already contrived to disinherit himself.  It is all an effort to save Tretton.”

“But it is dishonest,” said Florence.

“No doubt about it.  Looking at it any way it is dishonest, Either the inheritance must belong to Mountjoy still, or it could not have been his when he was allowed to borrow money upon it.”

“I cannot understand it.  I thought it was entailed upon him.  Of course it is nothing to me.  It never could have been anything.”

“But now the creditors declare that they have been cheated, and assert that Mountjoy is being kept out of the way to aid old Mr. Scarborough in the fraud.  I cannot but say that I think it is so.  But why he should have attacked me just at the moment of his going, or why, rather, he should have gone immediately after he had attacked me, I cannot say.  I have no concern whatever with him or his money, though I hope—­I hope that I may always have much with you.  Oh, Florence, you surely have known what has been within my heart.”