“A nice business this!” remarked Mr. Croft, when Mrs. Dudley had left the two men standing together in the yard; “a nice business it might have turned out. Where could your eyes have been not to see Mr. Dudley was as mad as a March hare when you left off work? If it had not been for Mrs. Dudley, there would have been a fine bonfire here to-night.”
“Well, sir, my mind did misgive me,” was the reply; “and more especially along of these here shavings. I told Mr. Dudley they were not safe stowed away in that there carpenter’s shop, with the gas escaping like anything. I wanted to have them cleared out, and offered to wait and see it properly done, but he said he wanted to go out and could not have them moved till Monday. He looked real down wild when he said it, and my mind misgave me; but I never thought of him trying such a start as this.”
“Mr. Lukin will be here on Monday, and you can tell him all about it, just as it happened,” said Mr. Croft; “but don’t let the men get hold of his having tried to fire the place. It would not be pleasant for poor Mrs. Dudley.”
“Which a real lady is,” finished Morrison; “many a time I was sorry to see her here, so unsuitable it seemed. Never fear, sir, nobody shall hear the story from me, not even Mr. Lukin. I need not tell him Mrs. Dudley came for me; and when we get these things out of the way, and the place to rights a bit, no one need be any the wiser.”
“And, as I cannot find any of the keys, I will take the books in for security, if you will hand them to me,” said Mr. Croft. And so he had the books carried across the yard and placed on the dining-room table, where in five minutes he discovered the deficiency.
“If I can only now open the safe, we may snap our fingers at Mr. Lukin,” thought Heather’s friend, as he closed the books and shut in the record of the borrowed money which had almost overturned Arthur’s reason.
Then he sought Mrs. Dudley, who was seated in an arm-chair, resting her head on both hands. And before her on the table lay a little locket, which Mr. Croft recognised as having been taken from the poor broken creature who, still hanging between life and death, was quiet enough upstairs—quiet enough and low enough to have contented his enemy, if he had one.
“You are very ill, I fear,” Mr. Croft said, in that almost caressing tone which had won its way to Bessie’s heart in the sunshiny days that seemed now so far—so far away. He had two natures, this man, who had loved the girl so passionately and deceived her so grossly: one tender and compassionate, the other reckless and cynical. “You are very ill, I fear; in the press of other matters you have been neglected. Let me see to you now a little—what is there you can have, likely to do you any good?”
“I do not know,” she answered. “I have been upstairs and seen him. Oh! Mr. Croft, what are the chances of his recovery? tell me the truth. It is not likely the doctor would be frank with me.”
“I think it greatly depends on his being kept quiet; there is nothing now that ought to distress or worry him. I have discovered the cause of all this misery; it is a very trifling cause indeed which has produced such results.”