“For all that, don’t you know,” continued Sir William, with a forced laugh, which struck Randolph as not only discordant, but as having an insolent significance, “it might have been a deuced bad business for you, eh?  Last man who was with him, eh?  In possession of his portmanteau, eh?  Wearing his clothes, eh?  Awfully clever of you to go straight to the bank with it.  ’Pon my word, my legal man wanted to pounce down on you as ‘accessory’ until I and Dingwall called him off.  But it’s all right now.”

Randolph’s antagonism to the man increased.  “The investigation seems to have been peculiar,” he said dryly, “for, if I remember rightly, at the coroner’s inquest on the body I saw you with, the verdict returned was of the death of an unknown man.”

“Yes; we hadn’t clear proof of identity then,” he returned coolly, “but we had a reexamination of the body before witnesses afterward, and a verdict according to the facts.  That was kept out of the papers in deference to the feelings of the family and friends.  I fancy you wouldn’t have liked to be cross-examined before a stupid jury about what you were doing with Jack’s portmanteau, even if we were satisfied with it.”

“I should have been glad to testify to the kindness of your brother, at any risk,” returned Randolph stoutly.  “You have heard that the portmanteau was stolen from me, but the amount of money it contained has been placed in Mr. Dingwall’s hands for disposal.”

“Its contents were known, and all that’s been settled,” returned Sir William, rising.  “But,” he continued, with his forced laugh, which to Randolph’s fancy masked a certain threatening significance, “I say, it would have been a beastly business, don’t you know, if you had been called upon to produce it again—­ha, ha!—­eh?”

Returning to the dining room, Randolph found Miss Avondale alone on a corner of the sofa.  She swept her skirts aside as he approached, as an invitation for him to sit beside her.  Still sore from his experience, he accepted only in the hope that she was about to confide to him her opinion of this strange story.  But, to his chagrin, she looked at him over her fan with a mischievous tolerance.  “You seemed more interested in the cousin than the brother of your patron.”

Once Randolph might have been flattered at this.  But her speech seemed to him only an echo of the general heartlessness.  “I found Miss Eversleigh very sympathetic over the fate of the unfortunate man, whom nobody else here seems to care for,” said Randolph coldly.

“Yes,” returned Miss Avondale composedly; “I believe she was a great friend of Captain Dornton when she was quite a child, and I don’t think she can expect much from Sir William, who is very different from his brother.  In fact, she was one of the relatives who came over here in quest of the captain, when it was believed he was living and the heir.  He was quite a patron of hers.”