"It ought to be told to Mr. Wilberforce!"
"Be still, for heaven's sake! Would you ruin me? You must give me your promise, Henry Arkell, not to betray this; now, before we part."
"I don't wish to betray it; I'd do anything rather than bring trouble upon you. But it ought to be told."
"Nobody living may be the worse for what Rolls has done; nobody may ever hear of it more. Of course I shall charge him with his duplicity, and get the leaf back from him, if it is not destroyed, and replace it in the book. In that case, nobody can be the worse. Give me your promise."
Henry did not see what else he could do. If the leaf could be got back, and replaced, to speak of the abstraction might be productive of needless, gratuitous harm to George Prattleton. He put his hand into George's.
"You have my promise," he said; "but on one condition. I will never speak of this, so long as I am unaware of any urgent necessity existing for its disclosure. But should that necessity come, then I shall ask you to release me from my promise; and if you decline, I shall consider myself no longer bound by it."
"Very well; a bargain," said George Prattleton, after a pause. "And now I'm after that scoundrel Rolls. I'll tell you a secret before I go—tit for tat. Do you know how you got fastened in the church?"
"I suppose you did it, not knowing I was there."
"Not I. It was Lewis."
"Lewis!"