“All this is neither here nor there, Mr. Allen,” I exclaimed, wholly out of patience.  “If you have come with a message, let me have it.  If not, I beg you get out of my sight, for I have neither the will nor the desire for palavering.”

“Oh, Richard, do keep your temper!” implored Dorothy.  “Can you not see that Mr. Allen desires to do us—­to do you—­a service?”

“Of that I am not so sure,” I replied.

“It is his way, Miss Manners,” said the rector, “and I hold it not against him.  To speak truth, I looked for a worse reception, and came steeled to withstand it.  And had my skin been thin, I had left ere now.”  He took more snuff.  “It was Mr. Dix,” he said to me slowly, “who informed Mr. Carvel of your presence in London.”

“And how the devil did Mr. Dix know?”

He did not reply, but glanced apprehensively at Dorothy.

And I have wondered since at his consideration.

“Miss Manners may not wish to hear,” he said uneasily.

“Miss Manners hears all that concerns me,” I answered.

He shrugged his shoulders in comprehension.

“It was Mr. Manners, then, who went to Mr. Dix, and told him under the pledge of secrecy.”

Not a sound came from Dorothy, nor did I dare to look at her face.  The whole matter was clear to me now.  After his conversation with me, Mr. Marmaduke had lost no time in seeing Mr. Dix, in order to raise money on my prospects.  And the man of business had gone straight to Grafton with the intelligence.  The suspicion flashed through me that Mr. Allen had been sent to spy, but his very next words disarmed it.

“And now, Richard,” he continued, “before I say what I have come to say, and since you cannot now prosecute me, I mean to confess to you something which you probably know almost to a certainty.  I was in the plot to carry you off and deprive you of your fortune.  I have been paid for it, though not very handsomely.  Fears for my own safety alone kept me from telling you and Mr. Swain.  And I swear to you that I was sorry for the venture almost before I had embarked, and ere I had received a shilling.  The scheme was laid out before I took you for a pupil; indeed, that was part of it, as you no doubt have guessed.  As God hears me, I learned to love you, Richard, in those days at the rectory.  You were all of a man, and such an one as I might have hoped to be had I been born like you.  You said what you chose, and spoke from your own convictions, and catered to no one.  You did not whine when the luck went against you, but lost like a gentleman, and thought no more of it.  You had no fear of the devil himself.  Why should you?  While your cousin Philip, with his parrot talk and sneaking ways, turned my stomach.  I was sick of him, and sick of Grafton, I tell you.  But dread of your uncle drove me on, and I had debts to frighten me.”

He paused.  “Twas with a strange medley of emotions I looked at him.  And Dorothy, too, was leaning forward, her lips parted and her eyes riveted upon his face.