"I am not thinking of debt, Carr: that is over for me. But there's no denying that I behaved disgracefully to—you know—and Dr. Ashton has good reason to be incensed. Can he be bringing an action against me, and is this visit in any way connected with it?"
"Nonsense," said Mr. Carr.
"Is it nonsense! I'm sure I've heard of their dressing-up these serving-officers as clergymen, to entrap the unwary. Well, call it nonsense, if you like. What of my suggestion in regard to Dr. Ashton?"
Thomas Carr paused to consider. That it was most improbable in all respects, he felt sure; next door to impossible.
"The doctor is too respectable a man to do anything of the sort," he answered. "He is high-minded, honourable, wealthy: there's no inducement whatever. No."
"Yes, there may be one: that of punishing me by bringing my disgrace before the world."
"You forget that he would bring his daughter's name before it at the same time. It is quite out of the range of possibility. The Ashtons are not people to seek legal reparation for injury of this sort. But that your fears are blinding you, you would never suspect them of being capable of it."
"The stranger is upstairs, my lord," interrupted Hedges, coming back to the room. "I asked him what name, and he said your lordship would know him when you saw him, and there was no need to give it."
Lord Hartledon went upstairs, marshalled by the butler. Hedges was resenting the mystery; very much on his master's account, a little on his own, for it cannot be denied that he was given to curiosity. He threw open the door of the little smoking-den, and in his loftiest, loudest, most uncompromising voice, announced:
"The gentleman, my lord."