"Is he rich—this captain—what horse-marine corps is he captain of?" continued Morley in an angry whisper.
"Oh, Morley, hush! he is not rich, poor fellow!"
"Poor devil!" muttered Morley.
"But he has realised something; I know not what; though he asserts that he has come back to us poorer than when he went away."
"To us," replied Morley, with growing displeasure, which he strove in vain to conceal. "Who is he?"
"A second cousin, or something of that kind, to papa, and the son of his old friend, Mr. Thomas Hawkshaw, of Lincoln's-inn. But why all these questions?" asked Ethel, looking her lover fully and fondly in the face.
Morley Ashton did not reply, for he felt an instinctive doubt and hatred of Hawkshaw: emotions that rose within his breast he scarcely knew why or wherefore; but, as a Scottish poet has it:
"Men feel by instinct swift as light,
The presence of the foe,
Whom God has marked in after years
To strike the mortal blow!"
Hawkshaw, while talking apparently to Mr. Basset, had his keen and sinister eyes fixed on the couple at the piano. They seemed plainly enough to indicate similar emotions in his breast, and to say:
"You are one too many in my diggings, Mr. Ashton. Poco e poco, I must get rid of you, my fine fellow, at whatever risk or cost!"