“Geoffrey Trethick, Esquire! Ha, ha, ha! Poor old fellow! Esquire! A broken-down mining adventurer in a smuggler’s cottage. No, Master Paul, I am not in the spirit you mean, and it is of no use for us to meet and quarrel again.”
“Will you write an answer, sir?” said Pengelly, after watching Trethick for some minutes, as he read and re-read the letter, and then walked up and down talking to himself.
“Yes—no—yes—no. Wait a few moments, Pengelly. I have not yet made up my mind. Tell him—tell Mr Paul—yes, tell him that I will come up and see him this evening. I will not write.”
Pengelly nodded, and moved towards the cottage to get a sight of Bessie.
“Have you heard, sir, who has bought the mine?” he asked.
“No, Pengelly. I have been trying, but they keep it very quiet. You have heard nothing, I suppose?”
“Not a word, sir,” said Pengelly, with a sigh; and he went on into the cottage.
“Papa-in-law elect does not seem to give him so much of his confidence as he does me. However, just as he likes. Now what am I to say to the old man?”
He walked up and down thinking for a few minutes, and then decided that the time had come for him to speak out frankly all that he knew, and to refer them to Madge for the rest.
“Poor lass! I’ll speak up well for her sufferings. She has done wrong, but look at her. Poor lass! How a man can be such a scoundrel, and leave a poor weak girl to fight out her difficulties alone, is more than I can understand; and what Nature is about to allow it. Here’s poor Madge dying of consumption, and scouted as an outcast for her wrong, and the scoundrel who shared her sin—bah, no! who made her sin—is in high feather, and about to be rewarded for his goodness with a beautiful and loving wife—