‘I am sure we had much rather—­’

’No stuff and nonsense.  Here is Roland with four children already—­ very likely to have a dozen more.  If you and he are fools, I’m not, and I won’t take the bread out of their mouths.  I’ll leave my will behind, bequeathing whatever I may get out of the fire evenly between you two, as the only way to content you; and if I never turn up again, why you’re rid of the old man.’

‘Very well, uncle, I shall take my own passage at the same time.’

’You don’t know what you are talking of.  You are a silly child, and your brother would be a worse if he let you go.’

’If Jem lets you go, he will let me.  He shall let me.  Don’t you know that you are never to have me off your hands, uncle?  No, no, I shall stick to you like a burr.  You may go up to the tip-top of Chimborazo if you please, but you’ll not shake me off.’

It was her fixed purpose to accompany him, and she was not solicitous to dissuade him from going, for she could be avaricious for James’s children, and had a decided wish for justice on the guilty party; and, besides, Clara had a private vision of her own, which made her dance in her little room.  Mary had written in her father’s stead-there was not a word of Mr. Ward—­indeed, Mr. Ponsonby was evidently so ill that his daughter could think of nothing else.  Might not Clara come in time to clear up any misunderstanding—­convince Mr. Ponsonby—­describe Louis’s single-hearted constancy during all these five years, and bring Mary home to him in triumph?  She could have laughed aloud with delight at the possibility; and when the other alternative occurred to her, she knit her brows with childish vehemence, as she promised Miss Mary that she would never be her bridesmaid.

Presently she heard Fitzjocelyn’s voice in the parlour, and, going down, found him in consultation over a letter which Charlotte had brought to her master.  It was so well written and expressed, that Louis turned to the signature before he could quite believe that it was from his old pupil.  Tom wrote to communicate his perplexity at the detection of the frauds practised on his employers.  He had lately been employed in the office at Lima, where much had excited his suspicion; and, finally, from having ’opened a letter addressed by mistake to the firm, but destined for an individual, he had discovered that large sums, supposed to be required by the works, or lost in the Equatorial failure, had been, in fact, invested in America in the name of that party.’  The secret was a grievous burthen.  Mr. Ponsonby was far too ill to be informed; besides that, he should only bring suspicion on himself; and Miss Ponsonby was so much occupied as to be almost equally inaccessible.  Tom had likewise reason to believe that his own movements were watched, and that any attempt to communicate with her or her father would be baffled; and, above all, he could not endure himself to act the spy and informer.  He only wished that, if possible, without mentioning names, Charlotte could give a hint that Mr. Dynevor must not implicitly trust to all he heard.