But the creditors were still loud, and still envenomed.  They and their emissaries hung about Tretton and demanded to know where was the captain.  Of the captain’s whereabouts his father knew nothing, not even whether he was still alive; for the captain had actually disappeared from the world, and his creditors could obtain no tidings respecting him.  At this period, and for long afterward, they imagined that he and his father were in league together, and were determined to try at law the question as to the legitimacy of his birth as soon as the old squire should be dead.  But the old squire did not die.  Though his life was supposed to be most precarious he still continued to live, and became even stronger.  But he remained shut up at Tretton, and utterly refused to see any emissary of any creditor.  To give Mr. Tyrrwhit his due, it must be acknowledged that he personally sent no emissaries, having contented himself with putting the business into the hands of a very sharp attorney.  But there were emissaries from others, who after a while were excluded altogether from the park.

Here Mr. Scarborough continued to live, coming out on to the lawn in his easy-chair, and there smoking his cigar and reading his French novel through the hot July days.  To tell the truth, he cared very little for the emissaries, excepting so far as they had been allowed to interfere with his own personal comfort.  In these days he had down with him two or three friends from London, who were good enough to make up for him a whist-table in the country; but he found the chief interest in his life in the occasional visits of his younger son.

“I look upon Mountjoy as utterly gone,” he said.

“But he has utterly gone,” his other son replied.

“As to that I care nothing.  I do not believe that a man can be murdered without leaving a trace of his murder.  A man cannot even throw himself overboard without being missed.  I know nothing of his whereabouts,—­ nothing at all.  But I must say that his absence is a relief to me.  The only comfort left to me in this world is in your presence, and in those material good things which I am still able to enjoy.”

This assertion as to his ignorance about his eldest son the squire repeated again and again to his chosen heir, feeling it was only probable that Augustus might participate in the belief which he knew to be only too common.  There was, no doubt, an idea prevalent that the squire and the captain were in league together to cheat the creditors, and that the squire, who in these days received much undeserved credit for Machiavellian astuteness, knew more than any one else respecting his eldest son’s affairs.  But, in truth, he at first knew nothing, and in making these assurances to his younger son was altogether wasting his breath, for his younger son knew everything.

CHAPTER II.

Florence Mountjoy.