Of the narrative just placed before the reader, it is clear that Leonard could gather only desultory fragments. He could but see that his ill-fated mother had been united to a man she had loved with surpassing tenderness; had been led to suspect that the marriage was fraudulent; had gone abroad in despair; returned repentant and hopeful; had gleaned some intelligence that her lover was about to be married to another, and there the manuscript closed with the blisters left on the page by agonizing tears. The mournful end of Nora, her lonely return to die under the roof of her parents,—this he had learned before from the narrative of Dr. Morgan.
But even the name of her supposed husband was not revealed. Of him Leonard could form no conjecture, except that he was evidently of higher rank than Nora. Harley L’Estrange seemed clearly indicated in the early boy-lover. If so, Harley must know all that was left dark to Leonard, and to him Leonard resolved to confide the manuscripts. With this resolution he left the cottage, resolving to return and attend the funeral obsequies of his departed friend. Mrs. Goodyer willingly permitted him to take away the papers she had lent to him, and added to them the packet which had been addressed to Mrs. Bertram from the Continent.
Musing in anxious gloom over the record he had read, Leonard entered London on foot, and bent his way towards Harley’s hotel; when, just as he had crossed into Bond Street, a gentleman in company with Baron Levy, and who seemed, by the flush on his brow and the sullen tone of his voice, to have had rather an irritating colloquy with the fashionable usurer, suddenly caught sight of Leonard, and, abruptly quitting Levy, seized the young man by the arm.
“Excuse me, sir,” said the gentleman, looking hard into Leonard’s face, “but unless these sharp eyes of mine are mistaken, which they seldom are, I see a nephew whom, perhaps, I behaved to rather too harshly, but who still has no right to forget Richard Avenel.”
“My dear uncle,” exclaimed Leonard, “this is indeed a joyful surprise; at a time, too, when I needed joy! No; I have never forgotten your kindness, and always regretted our estrangement.”
“That is well said; give us your fist again. Let me look at you—quite the gentleman, I declare—still so good-looking too. We Avenels always were a handsome family.
“Good-by, Baron Levy. Need not wait for me; I am not going to run away. I shall see you again.”
“But,” whispered Levy, who had followed Avenel across the street, and eyed Leonard with a quick, curious, searching glance—“but it must be as I say with regard to the borough; or (to be plain) you must cash the bills on the day they are due.”
“Very well, sir, very well. So you think to put the screw upon me, as if I were a poor little householder. I understand,—my money or my borough?”
“Exactly so,” said the baron, with a soft smile.