When he was gone, old Marks went back to the lodge like a man in a dream, and broke the terrible news to his daughter.
Bess refused to believe it. She would have rushed out and gone to her husband there and then. She would have proclaimed herself his wife gladly, now trouble had come upon him, but her father reasoned with her and showed her how futile such a course would be.
‘George does not want it known,’ he told her, and Bess, remembering how secret George had kept their marriage, believed that her father was right.
‘What can I do?’ she moaned. ‘I am his wife, and my place is by his side. He has got into all this trouble for my sake. But for me he could have gone away, and this horrible mistake would never have occurred.’
‘Mistake!’ said old Marks; ‘don’t you believe, then, that George is guilty?’
‘Guilty! Listen, father. I know my George to be one of the bravest, noblest-hearted men in the world. How dare you insult him by suggesting that he is guilty?’
Gradually, as Bess now realised the position of affairs, she worked herself up into a state of excitement, and talked at random. She would do this, she would do that. She paced the little room, now weeping, now crying out that there was a plot against them, and that her father was in it.
The old man endeavoured to calm her, promising that he would go up to the hall again, and get all the information he could.
Marks himself fully believed the young squire guilty. A hundred little things recurred to his mind to strengthen his belief. George’s mysterious arrival, travel-stained and penniless, his waiting till nightfall, and his desire to enter the hall unobserved when his father was alone, his hurried flight, and his mysterious instructions with regard to Bess—all these things pointed to the fact that the young man had attempted to rob his father, and in the struggle had injured him.
Old Squire Heritage himself said as much. It was true he seemed bewildered, but to all the questions put to him about the strange and terrible business he simply murmured, ‘My son! my only son!’ Marks felt as if he had been a traitor to his old master in the part he had played in the affair.