Only one horrible and ghastly suggestion presented itself to Arthur Lovell's mind. Henry Dunbar was the murderer of his old valet: and the consciousness of guilt had paralyzed him at the first touch of his daughter's innocent lips.
But, oh, how terrible if this were true—how terrible to think that Laura Dunbar was henceforth to live in daily and hourly association with a traitor and an assassin!
"I have promised to love her for ever, though my love is hopeless, and to serve her faithfully if ever she should need of my devotion," Arthur Lovell thought, as he sat silent at the dinner-table, while Henry Dunbar and his daughter talked together gaily.
The lawyer watched his client now with intense anxiety; and it seemed to him that there was something feverish and unnatural in the banker's gaiety. Laura and her step-sister left the room soon after dinner: and the two men remained alone at the long, ponderous-looking dinner-table, on which the sparkling diamond-cut decanters and Sèvres dessert-dishes looked like tiny vases of light and colour on a dreary waste of polished mahogany.
"I shall go to Maudesley Abbey to-morrow," Henry Dunbar said. "I want rest and solitude after all this trouble and excitement: and Laura tells me that she infinitely prefers Maudesley to London. Do you think of returning to Warwickshire, Mr. Lovell?"
"Oh, yes, immediately. My father expected my return a week ago. I only came up to town to act as Miss Dunbar's escort."
"Indeed, that was very kind of you. You have known my daughter for a long time, I understand by her letters."
"Yes. We were children together. I was a great deal at the Abbey in old Mr. Dunbar's time."
"And you will still be more often there in my time, I hope," Henry Dunbar answered, courteously. "I fancy I could venture to make a pretty correct guess at a certain secret of yours, my dear Lovell. Unless I am very much mistaken, you have a more than ordinary regard for my daughter."
Arthur Lovell was silent, his heart beat violently, and he looked the banker unflinchingly in the face; but he did not speak, he only bent his head in answer to the rich man's questions.