"Prove your friendship, then, by teaching Margaret Wilmot that she has a friend and not an enemy in me. If you are—as I suspect from your manner—something more than a friend: if you love her, and she returns your love, marry her, and she shall have a dowry that no gentleman's wife need be ashamed to bring to her husband."
There was no anger, no impatience in the banker's voice now, but a tone of deep feeling. Clement Austin locked at him, astonished by the change in his manner.
Henry Dunbar saw the look, and it seemed as if he endeavoured to answer it.
"You have no need to be surprised that I shrink from seeing Margaret Wilmot," he said. "Cannot you understand that my nerves may be none of the strongest, and that I cannot endure the idea of an interview with this girl, who, no doubt, by her persistent pursuit of me, suspects me of her father's murder? I am an old man, and I have been thirty-five years in India. My health is shattered, and I have a horror of all tragic scenes. I have not yet recovered from the shock of that horrible business at Winchester. Go and tell Margaret Wilmot this: tell her that I will be her true friend if she will accept that friendship, but that I will not see her until she has learned to think better of me."
There was something very straightforward, very simple, in all this. For a time, at least, Clement Austin's mind wavered. Margaret was, perhaps, wrong, after all, and Henry Dunbar might be an innocent man.
It was Clement who had informed Margaret of Mr. Dunbar's expected presence here upon this day; and it was on the strength of that information that the girl had come to St. Gundolph Lane, with the determination of seeing the man whom she believed to be the murderer of her father.
Clement returned to the office, where he had left Margaret, in order to repeat to her Mr. Dunbar's message.
No sooner had the door of the parlour closed upon the cashier than Henry Dunbar turned abruptly to his junior partner.
"There is a door leading from the yard into a court that connects St. Gundolph Lane with another lane at the back," he said, "is there not?"
He pointed to the dark little yard outside the window as he spoke.