“No,” he quietly said, “you need not ask that.”
“And—Hamish?” she would have continued, but the words would not come. She changed them for others.
“How do you know that he has paid any of his debts, Arthur?”
“I heard it. I—”
At that moment they heard something else—Hamish’s voice in the hall. In the impulse of the moment, in the glad revulsion of feeling—for, if Hamish were safe in the hall, he could not be in prison—Constance flew to him, and clasped her hands round his neck. “Oh, Hamish, Hamish! thank Heaven that you are here!”
Hamish was surprised. He went with Constance into the study, where Arthur had remained. “What do you mean, Constance? What is the matter?”
“I am always fearful,” she whispered; “always fearful; I know you owe money, and that they might put you in prison. Hamish, I think of it by night and by day.”
“My pretty sister!” cried Hamish, caressingly, as he smoothed her hair, just as Constance sometimes smoothed Annabel’s: “that danger has passed for the present.”
“If you were arrested, papa might lose his post,” she murmured.
“I know it; it is that which has worried me. I have been doing what I could to avert it. Constance, these things are not for you. Who told you anything about them?”