“What is to become of me?” was his saluting question, spoken in his clear, decisive tone. “How am I to refund this money to my wards, the Chisholms?”
Thomas Godolphin had no satisfactory reply to make. He missed the friendly hand held out hitherto in greeting. Mr. Hastings did not take a chair, but stood up near the table, firm, stern, and uncompromising.
“I hear George is off,” he continued.
“He has gone to London, Maria informs me,” replied Thomas Godolphin.
“Mr. Godolphin, can you sit there and tell me that you had no suspicion of the way things were turning? That this ruin has come on, and you ignorant of it?”
“I had no suspicion; none whatever. None can be more utterly surprised than I. There are moments when a feeling comes over me that it cannot be true.”
“Could you live in intimate association with your brother, and not see that he was turning out a rogue and a vagabond?” went on the Rector in his keenest and most cynical tone.
“I knew nothing, I suspected nothing,” was the quiet reply of Thomas.
“How dared he take that money from me the other night, when he knew that he was on the verge of ruin?” asked Mr. Hastings. “He took it from me; he never entered it in the books; he applied it, there’s no doubt, to his own infamous purposes. When a suspicion was whispered to me afterwards, that the Bank was wrong, I came here to him. I candidly spoke of what I had heard, and asked him to return me the money, as a friend, a relative. Did he return it? No: his answer was a false, plausible assurance that the money and the Bank were alike safe. What does he call it? Robbery? It is worse: it is deceit; fraud; vile swindling. In the old days, many a man has swung for less, Mr. Godolphin.”
Thomas Godolphin could not gainsay it.