“And I do think that we can. I have given him a good deal of consideration, and have come to the conclusion that he is a gentleman. From the inquiries we have made of him, we have learnt nothing that could lead us to believe him anything but honourable. A few days ago I thought as you do. Mr. Lyon has no doubt every desire to shield the honour of his firm. But when he comes back, I mean to interview him and implore him to help us to save an innocent man from worse than death.”
“And surely he cannot refuse so reasonable a prayer.”
“I wonder how he came to suspect Hugh Stavanger, and how much he really knows.”
“We shall, I hope, discover everything in time—at any rate, enough to reverse the positions of Harley and young Stavanger.”
“Poor Harley. How dreadfully ill he looked yesterday! And yet how brave he tried to be! But hurry up, father, you know that it is just possible for the ‘Merry Maid’ to have reached Malta to-day, and a message may even now be waiting for us.”
There was no cablegram waiting for them, but the quartette spent the rest of the day without augmented anxiety, little dreaming of the terrible tidings in store for them. Late in the evening they were all sitting round the drawing-room fire, the ladies working while Mr. Cory read extracts from the “Echo.”
“Great Heavens!” he exclaimed suddenly, as his eye lighted on a passage which filled him with consternation. “Surely God himself is working for our enemies.”
His words so startled his companions that at least two of them were incapable of inquiring the nature of the new calamity which had evidently befallen them.
“What has happened now?” gasped Miss Cory, her face pale with consternation.
“Read for yourself,” was the reply, as her brother handed the paper to her. She took it with trembling fingers, but gained courage, when she saw, at a glance, that the news was not what she had feared.