“Yes; papa perhaps wants me.”
“Come back to me soon, pet. Now that we have no false barriers between us, we can talk in fullest confidence.”
Lucy hurried away, but no sooner had she reached the corridor than she burst into tears.
CHAPTER XXV. THE TELEGRAM.
When Lacy reached the drawing-room, she found her father and Sir Brook deep in conversation in one of the window-recesses, and actually unaware of her entrance till she stood beside them.
“No,” cried Lendrick, eagerly; “I can't follow these men in their knaveries. I don't see the drift of them, and I lose the clew to the whole machinery.”
“The drift is easy enough to understand,” said Foss-brooke. “A man wants to escape from his embarrassments, and has little scruple as to the means.”
“But the certainty of being found out—”
“There is no greater fallacy than that. Do you imagine that one-tenth of the cheats that men practise on the world are ever brought to light? Or do you fancy that all the rogues are in jail, and all the people who are abroad and free are honest men? Far from it. Many an inspector that comes to taste the prison soup and question the governor, ought to have more than an experimental course of the dietary; and many a juryman sits on the case of a creature far better and purer than himself. But here comes one will give our thoughts a pleasanter channel to run in. How well you look, Lucy! I am glad to see the sunny skies of Sardinia have n't blanched your cheeks.”