This was true. Mr. Williams, though he was not free from the faults of the parvenu, was ostentatious in his charities and respectful towards wealth, had a handsome person and a dignified carriage, and was in every way his son’s superior. He had been most anxious to make Ned Mitchell’s acquaintance, feeling that in this man, who had begun with little and by his own exertions had made it much, he should meet with a congenial nature. And so it proved. Ned having the same feeling towards him, they had become, at their first interview, if not friends, at least mutually well-disposed acquaintances.
When Fred interrupted their tete-a-tete, they were deep in a conversation they found so interesting that Mr. Williams, in reply to his son’s request that he would come and be introduced to a lady, waved him away, saying, “Presently, my boy, presently.”
He came back, laughing at his father’s earnestness.
“He and that colonist fellow are so thick already that there’s no separatin’ ’em,” he said to Olivia. “They’re at it, hammer and tongs, about the old tower down at St. Cuthbert’s, and as the vicar has just come and shoved his little oar in, I expect they’ll be at it till breakfast time.”
“The tower of St. Cuthbert’s!” exclaimed Olivia, rising hastily from her chair. “What are they saying about that?”
Fred, who noticed everything, saw how keen was the interest she showed.
“Yes. You know my guv’nor was hot on building a new tower to the place, and paying for the repair of it. He likes things brand new, does the guv’nor, and he likes tablets and paragraphs with ‘Re-erected by the generosity of F. S. Williams, Esquire, of the Towers,’ on ’em. And he was put off it, I don’t exactly know how. So Mitchell’s working him up to it again.”
“Since your father won’t come to me, you shall take me to him,” said Olivia, brightly, though her lips were quivering.
Fred, still watching her carefully, noticed this also. As they crossed the floor of the tent, he could see that she was straining her ears to catch what she could of the talk of the three men. For Mr. Meredith Brander had now joined the other two, and was taking the chief share of the subject under discussion. This was no longer St. Cuthbert’s Tower, but the recent loss which the colonist had sustained by the poisoning of his hounds.
“My own impression,” the vicar was saying, in tones of conviction, “is that you must have caused their death yourself during your sleep.”