"No need to look for me abroad to-day, Peter," said his cousin, opening the dining-room door and meeting him in the hall. "I am not well enough to go out."
"What's the matter?" asked Peter.
"I don't know; I have had shivering fits all the morning—can do nothing but sit over this hot fire. Charlotte thinks it must be some sort of illness coming on; but I suppose it's only a cold. So you have got back at last?"
"Now, just," answered Peter, sitting down on the other side of the fire; "Travice said nothing about your illness; he was at the station."
"Was he? I did not know he had gone out. Oh, he thinks it's nothing, I dare say; I hope it will be nothing. What's this?"
Peter had handed him the ten-pound note. "It is what you paid to Mr. Fauntleroy while I was away; and bitterly vexed I am, to think he should have applied to you. I met Kenneth in leaving the station, and heard of it from him. But, William, I want to know why you paid it. Did Fauntleroy hold out any threats to you?"
"Something to that effect. He spoke of putting an execution into your house: it would not have done at all, you know, while strangers were in it. I never knew that he had got judgment."
"Oh yes, he did," said Peter, bitterly; "he took care of that. I am at his mercy any day, both in goods and person. He forgets, William, the service I rendered him, and my having to pay it: it is nothing but that that has kept me down in life. Put an execution in my house! I wonder where he expects to go to? Not to heaven, I should think?"
"He said his client pressed for the money—would not, in fact, wait."