“Don’t pay any attention to his crotchets, Bennett,” said Mr Robert, marching back from the window. “Silence?—Tell everybody, everybody!—it’s the only thing to do. He has proved himself too incapable to be allowed any longer to manage his own affairs. Besides, for Miss Lovell’s sake—I’m delighted, more than delighted; that business has been a load on my mind ever since I first heard of it. We’ll give a dinner-party, Charles, and ask the whole neighbourhood; I’ll write to that dry old Pitt, and insist that he shall come down and eat his words before he has any other dinner. Poor boy, we’ve treated him shamefully. But, I say, Bennett, what of Stephens? It seems to me that he comes badly enough out of it. What has he got to say for himself, eh?”
His kind, ugly face was radiant. Mr Bennett looked up nervously, for the tragedy of the night before had touched him more deeply than he knew himself.
“I don’t think we had better say anything further about his part of the business, poor fellow,” he answered, a little apologetically. “He is dead now, and he did his utmost at the last. Perhaps it’s easier to judge than to understand.”
“Dead! I thought that Anthony Miles had saved him?”
“Bowles said from what he saw and heard from a miserable boy—who, by the way, belongs to your village—that Stephens had got down to a very low ebb with want of food and want of rest, and the shock was too great. It really was very affecting, the boy’s grief and all that, and this morning the house is besieged. I think the poor fellow must have had some good in him, in spite of the ugly look his silence has.”
When Mr Bennett had gone, Mr Robert came back to the library, rubbing his hands.
“Well, Charles,” he said.
“Well, my dear Robert.”
“I am going to the cottage at once.”
“I would go with you if this lumbago only left me the power of moving. But let me forewarn you not to expect a very warm reception from Anthony.”