"I wish you had come," said the other; "it would have looked well, and pleased the rest of the directors. There has been some queer business—some of the books abstracted or destroyed, we can't tell which, and no means of knowing how we stand."
"Good Heavens!" said Phil, "to cover that fellow's retreat."
"It you mean Brown, it was not he. They were all there safe enough after he was gone; somebody must have got in by night and made off with them, some one that knew all about the place; the watchman saw a light, but that's all. It's supposed there must have been something compromising others besides Brown. He could not have cheated the company to such an extent by himself."
"Good Heavens!" cried Phil again in natural horror; "I wish I had followed my impulse and gone up to town straight: but it was very vague what was in the papers; I hoped it might not have been our place at all. And I say, Stanfield—who's the fellow they suspect?" Elinor had disengaged herself from Compton's arm; she perceived vaguely that the stranger paused before he replied, and that Phil, facing him with a certain square attitude of opposition which affected her imagination vaguely, though she did not understand why—was waiting with keen attention for his reply. She said, a little oppressed by the situation, "Phil, perhaps I had better go."
"Don't go," he said; "there's nothing secret to say. If there's anyone suspected it must very soon be known."
"It's difficult to say who is suspected," said the stranger, confused. "I don't know that there's much evidence. You've been in Scotland?"
"Yes, till the other day, when I came down here to see——" He paused and turned upon Elinor a look which gave the girl the most curious incomprehensible pang. It was a look of love; but, oh! heaven, was it a look called up that the other man might see? He took her hand in his, and said lightly yet tenderly, "Let's see, what day was it? the sixth, wasn't it the sixth, Nell?"
A flood of conflicting thoughts poured through Elinor's mind. What did it mean? It was yesterday, she was about to say, but something stopped her, something in Phil's eye—in the touch of his hand. There was something warning, almost threatening, in his eye. Stand by me; mind you don't contradict me; say what I say. All these things which he had repeated again and again were said once more in the look he gave her. "Yes," she said timidly, with a hesitation very unlike Elinor, "it was the sixth." She seemed to see suddenly as she said the words that calendar with the date hanging in the hall: the big 6 seemed to hang suspended in the air. It was true, though she could not tell how it could be so.
"Oh," said Stanfield, in a tone which betrayed a little surprise, and something like disappointment, "the sixth? I knew you had left Scotland, but we did not know where you had gone."
"That's not to be wondered at," said Phil, with a laugh, "for I should have gone to Ireland, to tell the truth; I ought to have been there now. I'm going to-morrow, ain't I, Nell? I had not a bit of business to be here. Winding up affairs in the bachelor line, don't you know; but I had to come on my way west to see this young lady first. It plays the deuce and all with one's plans when there's such a temptation in the way."