“Proceed, Frank!” he said, in a faltering voice, “go on, and tell me all. How did you become acquainted with this?”
“By the merest accident,” pursued the willing informant. “I was outside the drawing-room, resting between two dances. It was just at the time Captain Maynard was going off. From where I was standing, I could see up the stairway to the top landing. He was there talking to Sabina, and as it appeared to me, in a very confidential manner. I saw him slip something into her hand—a piece of money, I suppose—just after she had dropped something white into the pocket of his overcoat. I could tell it was paper—folded in the shape of a note.”
“Are you sure it was that?”
“Quite sure, uncle. I had no doubt of it at the time; and said to myself, ‘It’s a note that’s been written by my cousin, who has sent Sabina to give it to him.’ I’d have stopped him on the stair and made him give it up again, but for raising a row in the house. You know that would never have done.”
Sir George did not hear the boasting remark. He was not listening to it His soul was too painfully absorbed—reflecting upon this strange doing of his daughter.
“Poor child!” muttered he in sad soliloquy. “Poor innocent child! And this, after all my care, my ever-zealous guardianship, my far more than ordinary solicitude. Oh God! to think I’ve taken a serpent into my house, who should thus turn and sting me!”
The baronet’s feelings forbade farther conversation; and Scudamore was dismissed to his bed.