"The man is of sterling merit: he has forgotten self in striving patiently to benefit and shield me: reward him for my sake. I am sure he will repay in faithfulness all you can do for him."
Little more than this did Bede say; not a word as to the nature of what the benefit or the shielding had been. Mr. Greatorex knew now, for a revelation had been made to him through Judge Kene. Bede, only the day before his death, had posted a letter to Sir Thomas Kene, one that he had spent a week in writing, getting to it at intervals.
The anguish that communication, and other things, brought to Mr. Greatorex, was very sharp still. He was feeling it as he sat there in the evening twilight. Bede's death he had, in one sense, almost ceased to mourn: knowing now what a happy release from mental pain it must have been. But he could not think with the smallest patience of Bede's wife: never again, never again. She had been the primary author of all the misery: but for her, his son--ay, and someone else, dear to him as a son--had been, in all human probability, living now, happy, peaceful, and playing a good and busy part on the world's stage.
"Will you admit visitors sir?"
"Eh! what!"--and Mr. Greatorex started up half in alarm as the servant spoke, so deeply had he been buried in far-away thoughts. "Visitors this evening!--no. Stay, Philip. Who are they?"
"Sir Roland and Lady Yorke, sir."
"Oh, I'll see them," said Mr. Greatorex. "Ask them to walk up."
Roland and his wife, passing through London from their wedding tour, part of which had been spent in Ireland, at Lord Carrick's, had halted for a night at one of the hotels.
"To see old friends," said Roland. Not that he had many to see: Mrs. J. and Mr. Greatorex nearly comprised them. Whinny Yorke and her children were in Wales with her mother. Gerald had sent them, "as a temporary thing," till he could get "a bit straight." When that desirable epoch might be expected to dawn, was hidden in the mystery of the future. Gerald had been a good month in Whitecross Street prison, done to death pretty nearly with his creditors' reproaches, who used to go down in a body to abuse him when they found there was no chance of their getting a farthing. He and his chambers had been sold up; and altogether Gerald had come to considerable grief. Just now he was in Paris, enjoying himself on a sum of money that Lord Carrick had been induced to give him, and on the proceeds from an article that he supplied twice a week to a London newspaper. He thought himself terribly hard worked; and slightly relieved his bile by telling everybody that his brother Roland was the greatest villain under the sun. Roland meant to find him a post if he could, and meanwhile took care of Winny and the little ones: Gerald quietly ignored that.
"Sir Roland and Lady Yorke."