Serious, careworn, in peril of his life, John Musgrave laughed softly in his beard. “This is my first welcome home,” he said.
Geoff found a carriage waiting for him at Stanton. His first impulse having been to take the children to his mother, he gave them up now with a pang, having first witnessed the surprise of incredulous delight with which Lilias flung herself at her waking upon her father. The cry with which she hailed him, the illumination of her face, and, Geoff felt, her utter forgetfulness of his own claims, half-vexed the young man after his uncomfortable night; and it was with a certain pang that he gave the children up to their natural guardian. “Papa, this is Mr. Geoff,” Lilias said; “no one has ever been so kind; and he knows about you something that nobody else knows.”
John Musgrave looked up with a gleam of surprise and a faint suffusion of colour on his serious face. “Every one here knows about me,” he said, with a sigh; and then he turned to the young guardian of his children, “Lily’s introduction is of the slightest,” he said. “I don’t know you, nor how you have been made to take so much interest in them—how you knew even that they wanted help: but I am grateful to you with all my heart, all the same.”
“I am Geoffrey Stanton,” said the young man. He did not know how to make the announcement, but coloured high with consciousness of the pain that must be associated with his name. But it was best, he felt, to make the revelation at once. “The brother of Walter Stanton, whom——. As Lilias says, sir, I know more about you than others know. I have heard everything.”
John Musgrave shook his head. “Everything! till death steps in to one or another of the people concerned, that is what no one will ever know; but so long as you do not shrink from me, Lord Stanton—— You are Lord Stanton; is it not so?”
“I am not making any idle brag,” said Geoff. “I know everything. It was Bampfylde himself—Dick Bampfylde himself—who sent me after the children. I know the truth of it all, and I am ready to stand by you, sir, whenever and howsoever you want me—— ”
Geoff bent forward eagerly, holding out his hand, with a flush of earnestness and enthusiasm on his young face. Musgrave looked at him with great and serious surprise. His face darkened and lighted up, and he started slightly at the name of Bampfylde. At last, with a moment’s hesitation, he took Geoff’s outstretched hand, and pressed it warmly. “I dare not ask what it is you do know,” he said, “but there is nothing on my hand to keep me from taking yours; and thank you a thousand times—thank you for them. About everything else we can talk hereafter.”
In ten minutes after Geoff was whirling along the quiet country road on his way home. It was like a dream to him that all this should have happened since he last drove between those hedgerows, and he had the half-disappointed, half-injured feeling of one who has not carried out an adventure to its final end. He was worn out too, and excited, and he did not like giving up Lily into the hands of her father. Had it been Miss Musgrave he would have felt no difficulty. It was chilly in the early morning, and he buttoned up his coat to his chin, and put his hands in his pockets, and let his groom drive, who had evidently something to say to him which could scarcely be kept in till they got clear of the station. Geoff had seen it so distinctly in the man’s face, that he had asked at once, “Is all right at home?” But he was too tired to pay much attention to anything beyond that. When they had gone on for about a quarter of an hour, the groom himself broke the silence. “I beg your pardon, my lord—— ”
“What is it?” Geoff, retired into the recesses of his big coat, had been half asleep.
Then the man began an excited story. He had heard a scuffle and a struggle at a point of the road which they were about approaching when on his way to meet his master. Wild cries “not like a human being,” he said, and the sound of a violent encounter. “I thought of the madman I was telling your lordship of yesterday.” “And what was it?” cried Geoff, rousing up to instant interest; upon which the groom became apologetic.