“I will accompany you,” said the parson.
“Nay, pardon me, but I think we two young men can talk more openly without a third person, even so wise and kind as you.”
“Let Randal go,” growled the squire. And Randal went. He spent some time with Frank, and the reader will easily divine how that time was employed. As he left Frank’s lodgings, he found himself suddenly seized by the squire himself.
“I was too impatient to stay at home and listen to the parson’s prosing,” said Mr. Hazeldean, nervously. “I have shaken Dale off. Tell me what has passed. Oh, don’t fear,—I’m a man, and can bear the worst.”
Randal drew the squire’s arm within his, and led him into the adjacent park.
“My dear sir,” said he, sorrowfully, “this is very confidential what I am about to say. I must repeat it to you, because, without such confidence, I see not how to advise you on the proper course to take. But if I betray Frank, it is for his good, and to his own father;—only do not tell him. He would never forgive me; it would forever destroy my influence over him.”
“Go on, go on,” gasped the squire; “speak out. I’ll never tell the ungrateful boy that I learned his secrets from another.”
“Then,” said Randal, “the secret of his entanglement with Madame di Negra is simply this: he found her in debt—nay, on the point of being arrested—”
“Debt! arrested! Jezebel!”
“And in paying the debt himself, and saving her from arrest, he conferred on her the obligation which no woman of honour could accept save from an affianced husband. Poor Frank!—if sadly taken in, still we must pity and forgive him!”