“How?” cried Killigrew, amazed. “You say that? You believed it yourself?”
Master Lionel looked confused, a look which Sir John entirely misunderstood and interpreted entirely in the young man’s favour. And it was thus and in that moment that was sown the generous seed of the friendship that was to spring up between these two men, its roots fertilized by Sir John’s pity that one so gentle-natured, so honest, and so upright should be cursed with so villainous a brother.
“I see, I see,” he said. And he sighed. “You know that we are daily expecting an order from the Queen to her Justices to take the action which hitherto they have refused against your... against Sir Oliver.” He frowned thoughtfully. “D’ye think Sir Oliver had news of this?”
At once Master Lionel saw the drift of what was in the other’s mind.
“I know it,” he replied. “Myself I bore it him. But why do you ask?”
“Does it not help us perhaps to understand and explain Sir Oliver’s disappearance? God lack! Surely, knowing that, he were a fool to have tarried here, for he would hang beyond all doubt did he stay for the coming of her grace’s messenger.”
“My God!” said Lionel, staring. “You... you think he is fled, then?”
Sir John shrugged. “What else is to be thought?”
Lionel hung his head. “What else, indeed?” said he, and took his leave like a man overwrought, as indeed he was. He had never considered that so obvious a conclusion must follow upon his work so fully to explain the happening and to set at rest any doubt concerning it.
He returned to Penarrow, and bluntly told Nicholas what Sir John suspected and what he feared himself must be the true reason of Sir Oliver’s disappearance. The servant, however, was none so easy to convince.