“A question!—­was I?” said he, pausing, as if striving to recover the train of thought he had lost.  “Oh, yes,” he proceeded, “yes; there was a pound note taken from me.  I got it from the strange gentleman in the inn, and I wish I had it.”

“Well, sir,” replied Dandy, “if it can be got at all, you must have it.  I’ll inquire for it.”

“Do,” he said; “I wish to have it.”  Dandy, in reply to the stranger’s frequent and anxious inquiries about him, mentioned this little dialogue, and the latter at once recollected that he had the note in his possession.

“It may be good to gratify him,” he replied; “and as the note can be of little use now, we had better let him have it.”

He accordingly sent it to him by Dandy, who could observe that the possession of it seemed to give him peculiar satisfaction.

Had not the stranger been a man capable of maintaining great restraint over the exercise of very strong feelings, he could never have conducted himself with so much calmness and self-control in his interview with Lady Gourlay and poor Fenton.  His own heart during all the time was in a tumult of perfect distraction, but this was occasioned by causes that bore no analogy to those that passed before him.  From the moment he heard that Lucy’s marriage had been fixed for the next day but one, he felt as if his hold upon hope and life, and all that they promised him, was lost, and his happiness annihilated forever; he felt as if reason were about to abandon him, as if all existence had become dark, and the sun himself had been struck out of the system of the universe.  He could not rest, and only with difficulty think at all as a sane man ought.  At length he resolved to see the baronet, at the risk of life or death—­in spite of every obstacle—­in despite of all opposition;—­perish social forms and usages—­perish the insolence of wealth, and the jealous restrictions of parental tyranny.  Yes, perish one and all, sooner than he, a man, with an unshrinking heart, and a strong arm, should tamely suitor that noble girl to be sacrificed, ay, murdered, at the shrine of a black and guilty ambition.  Agitated, urged, maddened, by these considerations, he went to the baronet’s house with a hope of seeing him, but that hope was frustrated.  Sir Thomas was out.

“Was Miss Gourlay at home?”

“No; she too had gone out with her father,” replied Gibson, who happened to open the door.

“Would you be kind enough, sir, to deliver a note to Miss Gourlay?”

“I could not, sir; I dare not.”

“I will give you five pounds, if you do.”

“It is impossible, sir; I should lose my situation instantly if I attempted to deliver it.  Miss Gourlay, sir, will receive no letters unless through her father’s hands, and besides, sir, we have repeatedly had the most positive orders not to receive any from you, above all men living.”

“I will give you ten pounds.”