“My son, whom I have always spared and saved from all trouble,” she said, throwing up her hands, “he tells me I should have done that! Oh, Frank, it isn’t very pretty of you to upbraid me, when I have always done everything for the best.”
“Mother, I don’t want to upbraid you. I daresay you have done everything that was right,” he said, “but this is rather a dreadful thing to find out all at once. And there must be something that can be done—tell me whether there isn’t something I could do.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, with a sudden laugh, “there is one thing to be done, and that is to find out who are the defaulters. There is one man I am sure that knows, and you are, I suppose, in favour with the family, Frank, considering your intentions which you have just been telling me of. The one man is Dr. Buchanan. If you are going, as you say, to be his son-in-law, perhaps he will tell you. I am sure he is one of them himself.”
“Mother, if all this is to set me against——”
“It is not to set you against any one,” said Mrs. Mowbray. “I like Dr. Buchanan myself. I think he is one of them. If you can find out from him who they are, perhaps we may yet be saved.”
“He is one of them! This is nonsense, nonsense! You don’t know what you are saying, mother.”
“I wish everybody were as clear and composed as I am. I believe he is one of them. But make use of your interest with the boy and the girl, and get him to tell you who they are. And then perhaps we may be saved.”
The young man went round and round the room, striking the backs of the chairs with his paper-knife, solemnly, as if he expected to find some hollow place and make a discovery so.
“I don’t understand it. I don’t know what you mean. I can’t believe that this is possible,” he said; and he gave a louder crack to an old armchair, and stood before it, pondering, as if the secret must be out at last.