'And who the devil is he?' asked Jerry, testily.
'A poet and divine of the seventeenth century.'
Jerry sat staring into the fire as if bewildered by the sudden revelation—this new state of things.
'And who holds all the infernal mortgages?' asked Jerry, abruptly.
'I do—they are in the iron safe on yonder shelf.'
'You; and who advanced all this money to my father, and to myself latterly?'
'I did—every shilling to the old squire and to you, Mr. Jerry; but do not be alarmed—do not be alarmed—I have no intention of foreclosing.'
Jerry was more thunderstruck than ever. Here was another startling revelation. He found that more than half of his paternal estate was in the hands of the very man whose daughter he had been learning to love in secret, and whom his proud mother so heartily disliked and publicly slighted.
He had hinted, as related, of mortgages on the evening of his arrival with Bevil Goring, but this state of matters he was altogether unprepared for. In short, it would seem as if but a moiety of his property remained to him, and that the heiress of it all was Bella Chevenix!
Bella, the daughter of the village attorney, 'the lawyer man,' as Lady Julia called him, whose forefathers did yeoman service to his, and farmed old Langley Park.