But, bless you, he never meant to. He was too pleased to get Mr Barclay back, and to find that he hadn’t the least idea about the golden incubus being in the cellar; while as to the poor lad’s sorrow about his madness and that wretched woman, who was Ned Gunning’s wife, it was pitiful to see.
The other scoundrels had got away; and all at once we found that Gunning had discharged himself from the hospital; and by that time the house over the way was put straight, the builder telling me in confidence that he thought Sir John must have been mad to attempt to make such a passage as that to connect his property without consulting a regular business man. That was the morning when he got his cheque for the repairs, and the passage—which he called “Drinkwater’s Folly”—had disappeared.
Time went on, and the golden incubus went on too—that is, to a big bank in the Strand, for we were at Dorking now, where those young people spent a deal of time in the open air; and Mr Barclay used to say he could never forgive himself; but his father did, and so did some one else.
Who did?
Why, you don’t want telling that. Heaven bless her sweet face! And bless him, too, for a fine young fellow as strong—ay, and as weak, too, of course—as any man.
Dear, dear, dear! I’m pretty handy to eighty now, and Sir John just one year ahead; and I often say to myself, as I think of what men will do for the sake of a pretty face—likewise for the sake of gold: “This is a very curious world.”