‘I will, Mr. Piper. You may be sure of that.’
‘And now you’d better make yourself scarce, Chumney. I’d rather be alone when my wife comes home from her ride.’
‘You won’t be violent!’ urged Mr. Chumney.
‘No, Chumney, I am too angry to be violent. If I laid my little finger upon Standish it would mean murder. I feel it in me to do something dreadful. Don’t you be frightened, Chum. I shall treat him with the utmost civility. I shall only let him understand that his little game is found out. Good-bye.’
Mr. Chumney would have preferred to remain. He had an idea that his friend wanted him, in this crisis of his domestic life; but Mr. Piper thought otherwise, and was too resolute a man to allow himself to be overruled. So Chumney went away, unrefreshed and disheartened. He did not go back to Great Yafford immediately, but stopped at the “Crown” to regale himself with a temperate luncheon of bread and cheese and ale.
CHAPTER XIX.
A SHORT RECKONING.
When Chumney was gone Ebenezer Piper walked up and down the narrow track in the pine plantation, ruminating upon what he had been told. Why should any man, however princely in his ideas, make a gift of two hundred and thirty guineas to another man’s wife? Such a thing could hardly happen, without implying evil design in the giver. Bella might be innocent, but this man was guilty. This gift of the horse was one act of many, all tending towards a villanous conclusion.
And then there came back upon Mr. Piper’s mind the whole history of his wife’s acquaintance with Captain Standish—how this man, whose reputation had been made by an insolent exclusiveness, had been, from his introduction at the Park, a constant visitor. Mr. Piper had been flattered by this distinction, and had ascribed Captain Standish’s preference to an Epicurean appreciation of his fine house, and an intellectual pleasure in his conversation.
Now, all at once, he saw the past in a new light, and knew that he had been blind, and deaf, and foolish. Bella’s pretty face had been the attraction; Bella’s winning manners had been the lure.