"Heart-burnings? Yes, I can understand," murmured Squire Trevlyn.
"Ask him—Chattaway—about the two thousand pounds debt to Mr. Ryle," she continued, never flinching from her stern gaze, never raising her voice above its calm tones of low, concentrated indignation. "You have just said that you and Tom Ryle were friends, Rupert. Yes, you were friends; and had you reigned after my father, he, my husband, would not have been hunted to his death."
"Maude! What are you saying?"
"The truth. Wherever that man Chattaway could lay his oppressive hand, he has laid it. He pursued my husband incessantly during life; it was through that pursuit—indirectly, I admit—that he met his death. The debt of two thousand pounds, money which had been lent to Mr. Ryle, he, my father, cancelled on his death-bed; he made my husband a present of it; he would have handed him the bond then and there, but it was in Chattaway's possession, and he said he would send it to him. It never was sent, Rupert; and the first use Chattaway made of his new power when he came into the Hold, was to threaten to sue my husband upon the bond. The Squire had given my husband his word to renew the lease on the same terms, and you know that his word was never broken. The second thing Chattaway did was to raise the rent. It has been nothing but uphill work with us."
"I'll right it now, Maude," he cried, with all the generous impulse of the Trevlyns. "I'll right that, and all else."
"We have righted it ourselves," she answered proudly. "By dint of perseverance and hard work, not on my part, but on his"—pointing to George—"we have paid it off. Not many days ago, the last instalment of the debt and interest was handed to Chattaway. May it do him good! I should not like to grow rich upon unjust gains."
"But where is Rupert?" repeated Squire Trevlyn. "I must see Rupert."
Ah, there was no help for it, and the whole tale was poured into his ear. Between Mrs. Ryle's revelations on the one side, and Chattaway's denials on the other, it was all poured into the indignant but perhaps not surprised ear of the new master of Trevlyn. The unkindness and oppression dealt out to Rupert throughout his unhappy life, the burning of the rick, the strange disappearance of Rupert. He gave no token that he had heard it all before. Mrs. Ryle spared nothing. She told him of the suspicion so freely dealt out by the neighbourhood that Chattaway had made away with Rupert. Even then the Squire returned no sign that he knew of the suspicion as well as they did.
"Maude," he said, "where is Rupert? Diana, you answer me—where is Rupert?"
They were unable to answer. They could only say that he was absent, they knew not how or where.