“Lost!” echoed Mr. Yorke.
“Irrevocably. We were discussing ways and means amongst ourselves,” said Hamish, “for of course this changes our prospects materially.”
“And Constance is going out as a governess, if she can find any one to take her, and Arthur is to plod on with Joe Jenkins, and Tom means to apply for the post of bell-ringer to the cathedral,” interposed the incorrigible Annabel, who had once more darted in, and heard the last words. “Can you recommend Constance to a situation, Mr. Yorke?”
He treated the information lightly; laughed at and with Annabel; but Constance noticed that a flush crossed his brow, and that he quitted the subject.
“Has the inked surplice been found out, Tom,—I mean the culprit?”
“Not yet, Mr. Yorke.”
“Charles, you can tell me who it was, I hear?”
There was a startled glance for a moment in Charles’s eye, as he looked up at Mr. Yorke, and an unconscious meaning in his tone.
“Why, do you know who it was, sir?”
“Not I,” said Mr. Yorke. “I know that, whoever it may have been deserves a sound flogging, if he did it willfully.”