'No! no, thank you,' he cried in entreaty. 'I cannot see her—Ave.'
'Then come home with me. You shall see no one, and you will look up when you are not faint and fasting. You young men don't stand up against these things like us old stagers.'
As the carriage stopped, several anxious faces were seen on the watch, but the Doctor signed them back till he had deposited Henry in his study, and then came among them.
Gertrude was the first to speak. 'O, papa, papa, what is it! Mrs. Pugh has been here to ask, and Ethel won't let me hear, though Tom and Aubrey know.'
'I took refuge in your order to believe nothing till you came,' said Ethel, with hands tightly clasped together.
'It is true, then?' asked Tom.
'True that it looks as bad as bad can be,' said the Doctor, sighing heavily, and proceeding to state the aspect of the case.
'It is a trick—a plot,' cried Aubrey passionately; 'I know it is! He always said he would run away if they tried to teach him dishonesty; and now they have done this and driven him away, and laid the blame on him. Ethel, why don't you say you are sure of it?'
'Leonard would be changed indeed if this were so,' said Ethel, trembling as she stood, and hardly able to speak articulately.
Aubrey broke out with a furious 'If,' very different from Henry Ward's.