‘Oh! so the godly mean to rescue you, do they?’
‘I did not accept. Perhaps they will never think of it again.’
‘No; his ladies will not let him!’ sneered Mervyn.
Nevertheless, his last words that night were, ‘So the Raymonds have asked you!’
He was in a more satisfactory state the next day; feeble, but tamed into endurance of medical treatment, and almost indifferent about the robbery; as though his passion were spent, and he were tired of the subject. However, the police were
alert. The man whom they had taken up was a squatter in the forest, notorious as a poacher and thief, and his horse and cart answered to Phœbe’s description of the shadow. He had been arrested when returning with them from the small seaport on the other side of the forest in the next county, and on communicating with the authorities there, search at a dealer’s in marine stores had revealed hampers filled with the Beauchamp plate, as yet unmelted. The spoils of lesser bulk had disappeared with Smithson and the other criminal.
CHAPTER XX
Mascarille.—Oh! oh! je ne prenois pas garde;
Tandis que sans songer à mal, je vous regarde
Votre œil en tapinois me dérobe mon coeur,
Au voleur! au voleur! au voleur! au voleur!Cathos.—Ah! voilà qui est poussé dans le dernier galant!
Les Precieuses Ridicules
The detective arrived, looking so entirely the office clerk as to take in Mervyn himself at first sight; and the rest of the world understood that he was to stay till their master could go over the accounts with him. As housekeeper’s room company, his attentions were doubly relished by the housemaids, and jealousy was not long in prompting the revelation that Jane Hart had been Smithson’s sweetheart, and was supposed to have met him since his dismissal. Following up this trail, the detective proved to his own satisfaction that she had been at a ball at a public-house in the next village the night before the hunt, and had there met both Smithson and the poacher. This, however, he reserved for Mervyn’s private ear, still watching his victim, in the hope that she might unconsciously give some clue to the whereabouts of her lover. The espionage diverted Mervyn, and gave him the occupation for his thoughts that he sorely needed; but it oppressed Phœbe, and she shrank from the sight of the housemaid, as though she herself were dealing treacherously by her.
‘Phœbe,’ said Mervyn, mysteriously, coming into the library, where his tardy breakfast was spread, ‘that villain Smithson has been taken up at Liverpool; and here’s a letter for you to look at. Fenton has captured a letter to that woman Hart, who, he found, was always wanting to go to the post—but he can’t make it out; and I thought it was German, so I brought it to you. It looks as if old Lieschen—