“It is quite possible.”

“Young Surtees, I suppose.”

“I do not say there is anybody; but if there be anybody I do not think it is Surtees.”

“Who else then?”

“I cannot say, Larry.  I know nothing about it.”

“But there is some one?”

“I do not say so.  You ask me and I tell you all I know.”

Again they walked round the churchyard in silence and the attorney began to be anxious that the interview might be over.  He hardly liked to be interrogated about the state of his daughter’s heart, and yet he had felt himself bound to tell what he knew to the man who had in all respects behaved well to him.  When they had returned for the third or fourth time to the gate by which they had entered Larry spoke again.  “I suppose I may as well give it up.”

“What can I say?”

“You have been fair enough, Mr. Masters.  And so has she.  And so has everybody.  I shall just get away as quick as I can, and go and hang myself.  I feel above bothering her any more.  When she sat down to write a letter like that she must have been in earnest”

“She certainly was in earnest, Larry.”

“What’s the use of going on after that?  Only it is so hard for a fellow to feel that everything is gone.  It is just as though the house was burnt down, or I was to wake in the morning and find that the land didn’t belong to me.”

“Not so bad as that, Larry.”

“Not so bad, Mr. Masters!  Then you don’t know what it is I’m feeling.  I’d let his lordship or Squire Morton have it all, and go in upon it as a tenant at 30s. an acre, so that I could take her along with me.  I would, and sell the horses and set to and work in my shirt-sleeves.  A man could stand that.  Nobody wouldn’t laugh at me then.  But there’s an emptiness now here that makes me sick all through, as though I hadn’t got stomach left for anything.”  Then poor Larry put his hand upon his heart and hid his face upon the churchyard wall.  The attorney made some attempt to say a kind word to him, and then, leaving him there, slowly made his way back to his office.

We already know what first step Larry took with the intention of running away from his cares.  In the house at Dillsborough things were almost as bad as they were with him.  Over and over again Mrs. Masters told her husband that it was all his fault, and that if he had torn the letter when it was showed to him, everything would have been right by the end of the two months.  This he bore with what equanimity he could, shutting himself up very much in his office, occasionally escaping for a quarter of an hour of ease to his friends at the Bush, and eating his meals in silence.  But when he became aware that his girl was being treated with cruelty,—­that she was never spoken to by her stepmother without harsh words, and that her sisters were encouraged to be disdainful to her, then his heart rose within him and he rebelled.  He declared aloud that Mary should not be persecuted, and if this kind of thing were continued he would defend his girl let the consequences be what they might.