As Jonathan, one day at dinner in the servants’ hall, took occasion to direct these queries to the presiding Simon, the man gave such a horrid start, and exclaimed, “Away, I say!” so strangely, that Jonathan could doubt no longer—­nor, in fact, any other of the household:  Jennings gave them all round a vindictive scowl, left the table, hastened to his own room, and was seen no more that day.

Speculation now seemed at an end, it had ripened into probability;—­but what evidence was there to support so grave a charge against this rigid man?  Suspicions are not half enough to go upon—­especially since Roger Acton seemed to have had the money.  Therefore, though the folks at Hurstley, Sir John, his guests, and all the house, could not but think that Mr. Jennings acted very oddly—­still, he had always been a strange creature, an unpopular bailiff; nobody understood him.  So, Floyd, to his own no small danger, stood alone in accusing the man openly.

CHAPTER XLI.

GRACE’S ALTERNATIVE.

VERY shortly after that remarkable speech in the servants’ hall, Jonathan found another reason for believing that Mr. Simon Jennings was equal to any imaginable amount of human wickedness.  That reason will shortly now appear; but we must first of all dig at its roots somewhat deeper than Jonathan’s mental husbandry could manage.

If any trait of character were wanting to complete the desperate infamy of Jennings—­(really I sometimes hope that his grandfather’s madness had a kind of reawakening in this accursed man)—­it was furnished by a new and shrewd scheme for feeding to the full his lust of gold.  The bailiff had more than once, as we have hinted, found means to increase his evil hoard, by having secretly gained power over female innocence and honest reputation:  similarly he now devised a deep-laid plot, nothing short of diabolical.  His plot was this:  and I choose to hurry over such foul treason.  Let a touch or two hint its outlines:  those who will, may paint up the picture for themselves.  Simon looked at Sir John—­young, gay, wealthy; he coveted his purse, and fancied that the surest bait to catch that fish was fair Grace Acton:  if he could entrap her for his master (to whom he gave full credit for delighting in the plan), he counted surely on magnificent rewards.  How then to entrap her?  Thus:—­he, representing himself as prosecutor of Roger, the accused, held for him, he averred, the keys of life and death:  he would set this idea (whether true or not little mattered, if it served his purpose) before an affectionate daughter, who should have it in her power to save her parent, if, and only if, she would yield herself to Jennings:  and he well knew that, granting she gave herself secretly to him first, on such a bribe as her father’s liberation, he would have no difficulty whatever in selling her second-hand beauty on his own terms to his master.  It was a foul