‘My dear Owen, impossible!’
‘Mind, no one has told me in so many words, but Mervyn Fulmort gave me such an examination on Randolf as men used to do when matrimony is in the wind; and since that, he inferred the engagement, when he came to me in no end of a rage, because my backwoodsman had conscientious scruples against partaking in their concoction of evil spirits.’
‘Do you mean that Mervyn wants to employ him?’
‘To take him into partnership, on the consideration of a certain thirty thousand. You may judge whence that was to come! And he, like Robert, declined to live by murdering bodies and souls. I am afraid Mervyn has been persecuting them ever since.’
‘Ever since when?’
‘This last conversation was some three weeks ago. I suspect the principal parties settled it on that snowy Twelfth-day—’
‘But which of them, Owen?’
‘Which?’ exclaimed Owen, laughing. ‘The goggle or the squint?’
‘For shame, Owen. But I cannot believe that Phœbe would not have told me!’
‘Having a sister like Lady Bannerman may hinder confidences to friends.’