‘I wonder who wrote in that book?’ said Viola. ‘George Penwyn had no sister, and his mother died while he was very young. Perhaps those notes were written by Miss Morgrave, the young lady his father wanted him to marry.’
‘I should hardly have thought they were on intimate terms enough for that kind of thing.’
‘True. One must be very sure of a person’s friendship before one can venture to scribble one’s opinions in their books,’ returned Viola.
An hour later Maurice left the Manor House. He was glad to be alone, and free to think over the day’s work.
The idea which had hitherto seemed little better than a baseless fancy, the filmy weaving of his own romantic dreams, was now conviction. He held it as a certain fact that Justina was George Penwyn’s daughter, and that it must be his work to discover the missing link in Muriel Trevanard’s story, and the nature of that fatal union which had ended in shattered wits and a broken heart.
‘God grant that I may find evidence to confirm my own belief in the girl’s purity and the man’s honour,’ he said to himself, as he drove the dog-cart back to Borcel End. ‘If the popular idea of George Penwyn is correct, he must have been too good a man to play so base a part as that of betrayer; too kind to leave his victim to face the storm of parental wrath unprotected. But he was in his father’s power, and it is possible that he might have had recourse to a secret marriage rather than forfeit the old man’s favour and the Penwyn estate. Yet if this were the case, it is strange that he should have left England without endeavouring to secure his wife’s safety—that he should have made no provision for his child’s birth—an event the possibility of which he ought to have foreseen.’
This was a puzzling point. Indeed, the whole story was involved in mystery. Either George Penwyn must have deceived everybody who knew him as to his moral character; or he must have acted honestly towards Muriel.
‘There is only one person I can think of as likely to know the truth of the story,’ Maurice said to himself, ‘and that person is Miss Barlow, the schoolmistress at Seacomb. My first endeavour must be to find Miss Barlow, if she is still an inhabitant of this lower world.’
He had a good deal to do in Seacomb, yet was anxious, with a lover’s foolish yearning, to get back to London; so he got Martin to drive him over to the quiet old market town early next morning, and took care to put up at the oldest inn in the place—a rambling old house with a quadrangular yard—a relic of the good old coaching days.
‘There is no better place than an old inn in which to learn the traditions of a town,’ Maurice told himself. ‘I dare say I shall find some ancient waiter here who remembers everything that has happened at Seacomb for the last fifty years.’