"I have no doubt on the subject," said the old man, triumphantly. "But when a man has put himself within the reach of the law he is powerless, and we have him in our hands."
CHAPTER IX.
THE REVELATION.
She woke suddenly with the sense that somebody was by her, and found Horace seated by her bed. She had fallen asleep in the brightness of the morning, overcome with fatigue, and also partly calmed by having confided her secret to another: even when it is painful, when it is indiscreet, it is always a relief. The bosom is no longer bursting with that which it is beyond its power to contain. She woke suddenly with that sense of some one looking at her which breaks the deepest sleep. She was still in her dressing-gown, lying upon her bed. "Horace!" she said, springing up.
"I am so glad you have had a sleep. Don't jump up like that; you look so tired, mother, so worn out."
"Not now, my dear; I feel quite fresh now. Did you enjoy your evening?"
"What does it matter about my evening?" he said, almost sternly. "Mother, do you know that old Fareham came up by the night train?"
"Yes, Horace," she said, turning her head away.
"You knew? Do you think you are treating me fairly—I that am more interested than any one? What is the matter? The business has gone wrong. Do you mean to say that my father—my father——?"
Poor Horace's voice faltered. That it should be his father was the extraordinary thing, as it always is full of mystery to us how misfortune, much less shame, should affect us individually. He looked at his mother with a look which was imperative and almost commanding, not perplexed and imploring, as it had been before. Mr Fareham's arrival had thrown light, as Horace thought, on the mystery—light which to him, as a young man destined to be a merchant prince, and to convey to the world higher ideas of commerce altogether, was more dreadful than anything else could have been. He thought he saw it all; and that as no one would be so deeply affected as he, his mother had been weakly trying to hide it from him. Horace felt that his spirit would rise with disaster, and that he was capable of raising the house again and all its concerns from the ground.