"You have been my enemy. All that he did to help me,—all that others have done since to forward me on my way, has been brought to nothing—by you! My joys have been turned to grief, my rank has been made a disgrace, my wealth has become like ashes between my teeth;—and it has been your doing. They tell me that you will be my daughter's husband. I know that it must be so. But I do not see that you can be my friend."
"I had hoped to find you softer, Lady Lovel."
"It is not my nature to be soft. All this has not tended to make me soft. If my daughter will let me know from time to time that she is alive, that is all that I shall require of her. As to her future career, I cannot interest myself in it as I had hoped to do. Good-bye, Mr. Thwaite. You need fear no further interference from me."
So the interview was over, and not a word had been said about the attempt at murder.
CHAPTER XLVI.
HARD LINES.
At the time that the murder was attempted Lord Lovel was in London,—and had seen Daniel Thwaite on that morning; but before any confirmed rumour had reached his ears he had left London again on his road to Yoxham. He knew now that he would be endowed with something like ten thousand a year out of the wealth of the late Earl, but that he would not have the hand of his fair cousin, the late Earl's daughter. Perhaps it was as well as it was. The girl had never loved him, and he could now choose for himself;—and need not choose till it should be his pleasure to settle himself as a married man. After all, his marriage with Lady Anna would have been a constrained marriage,—a marriage which he would have accepted as the means of making his fortune. The girl certainly had pleased him;—but it might be that a girl who preferred a tailor would not have continued to please him. At any rate he could not be unhappy with his newly-acquired fortune, and he went down to Yoxham to receive the congratulation of his friends, thinking that it would become him now to make some exertion towards reconciling his uncle and aunt to the coming marriage.
"Have you heard anything about Mr. Thwaite?" Mr. Flick said to him the day before he started. The Earl had heard nothing. "They say that he has been wounded by a pistol-ball." Lord Lovel stayed some days at a friend's house on his road into Yorkshire, and when he reached the rectory, the rector had received news from London. Mr. Thwaite the tailor had been murdered, and it was surmised that the deed had been done by the Countess. "I trust the papers were signed before you left London," said the anxious rector. The documents making over the property were all right, but the Earl would believe nothing of the murder. Mr. Thwaite might have been wounded. He had heard so much before,—but he was quite sure that it had not been done by the Countess. On the following day further tidings came. Mr. Thwaite was doing well, but everybody said that the attempt had been made by Lady Lovel. Thus by degrees some idea of the facts as they had occurred was received at the rectory.
"You don't mean that you want us to have Mr. Thwaite here?" said the rector, holding up his hands, upon hearing a proposition made to him by his nephew a day or two later.