“Do you mean to tell me that there are no suspicions in the Bank that something, more than the public yet knows, is amiss with George Godolphin?” persisted Grace.
Isaac answered lightly and evasively. He was aware that such suspicions were afloat with the clerks. Chiefly led to by that application from the stranger, and his rude and significant charges, made so publicly. Isaac had not been present at that application. It was somewhat curious, perhaps—for a freemasonry runs amidst the clerks of an establishment, and they talk freely one with another—that he never heard of it until after the stoppage of the firm. If he had heard of it, he would certainly have told his father. But whatever suspicions he and his fellow-clerks might be entertaining against George Godolphin, he was not going to speak of them to Grace Akeman.
Grace turned to her mother. “Papa has a thousand pounds or two there, has he not?”
“Ah, child! if that were all!” returned Mrs. Hastings, with a groan.
“Why? What more has he there?” asked Grace, startled by the words and the tone. Rose, startled also, turned round to await the answer.
Mrs. Hastings seemed to hesitate. But only for a moment. “I do not know why I should not tell you,” she said, looking at her daughters. “Isaac and Reginald both know it. He had just lodged there the trust-money belonging to the Chisholms: nine thousand and forty-five pounds.”
A silence fell upon the room. Grace and her sister were too dismayed to speak immediately. Reginald, who had now seated himself astride on a chair, his face and arms over the back of it, set up a soft lugubrious whistle, the tune of some old sea-song, feeling possibly the silence to be uncomfortable. To disclose a little secret, Mr. Reginald was not in the highest of spirits, having been subjected to some hard scolding that day on the part of his father, and some tears on the part of his mother, touching the non-existence of any personal effects. He had arrived at home, for the fourth time since his first departure for sea, baggageless, his luggage consisting exclusively of what he stood up in. Of everything else belonging to him, he was able to give no account whatever. It is rather a common complaint amongst young sailors. And then he was always changing his ships.
“Is papa responsible for it?” The half-frightened question came from Rose.
“Certainly he is,” replied Mrs. Hastings. “If the Bank should not go on, why—we are ruined. As well as those poor children, the Chisholms.”
“Oh, mamma! why did he not draw it out this morning?” cried Grace in a tone of pain. “Tom told me that many people were paid in full.”