It was the thought which had several times occurred to Maria. “The trunk was addressed to the railway terminus in London, I remember,” she said. “He did not take it with him. It was sent up by the night train.”
“Then, in point of fact, you can give me no information about him: except this?”
“No,” she answered, feeling, she could hardly tell why, rather ashamed of having to make the confession. But it was no fault of hers. Thomas Godolphin rose to retire.
“I’m having breakfast with mamma, Uncle Thomas!” persisted the little busy tongue. “Margery’s gone for all day. Perhaps I shall have dinner with mamma.”
“Hush, Meta!” said Maria, speaking in a sadly subdued manner, as if the chatter, intruding upon their seriousness, were more than she could bear. “Thomas, is the Bank going on again? Will it be opened to-day?”
“It will never go on again,” was Thomas Godolphin’s answer: and Maria shrank from the lively pain of the tone in which the words were spoken.
There was a blank pause. Maria became conscious that Thomas had turned, and was looking gravely, it may be said searchingly, at her face.
“You have known nothing, I presume, Maria, of—of the state that affairs were getting into? You were not in George’s confidence?”
She returned the gaze with honest openness, something like wonder shining forth from her soft brown eyes. “I have known nothing,” she answered. “George never spoke to me upon business matters: he never would speak to me upon them.”
No; Thomas felt sure that he had not. He was turning again to leave the room, when Maria, her voice a timid one, a delicate blush rising to her cheeks, asked if she could have some money.