‘Your insight does you credit, Redgrave,’ he said at length. ‘I admit that it was part of my wish to secure your silence, and perhaps your co-operation. Nevertheless, my chief reason for insisting on a betrothal was a regard for Teresa’s future. There are pages in the history of my life that——’ He stopped.
‘We will not go into that,’ he said shortly.
‘As you please,’ Richard assented. ‘Perhaps, to change the subject, you will tell ‘me your object in disappearing so completely to-day, to the grave alarm of my future wife?’
The youth’s spectacles gleamed with good-humoured mischief.
‘I had to perform a certain excursion,’ said Raphael Craig.
‘Now, why in the name of fortune, sir, don’t you say at once that you went to London?’
‘How do you know that I went to London?’
‘By this paper.’ Richard pointed to the Westminster Gazette, which lay on the floor. ‘It is to-night’s special edition. The Westminster Gazette is not on sale in Hockliffe.’
‘Yes,’ said the old man half dreamily, ‘I went to London.’
‘In order to close finally the estate of your uncle, who left you all that silver?’