As before, Nora shook her head.
"He is the only lawyer I ever heard papa mention."
"But, my dear Miss Lindsay, your father is a man of affairs--of wealth; he lives here at the rate of I don't know how many thousand pounds a year, and has never owed a man a penny; you must know something of his affairs."
"All I know is that he has always given me all the money I wanted, and not seldom more than I wanted; I have never had to ask him for any; but beyond that I know nothing."
When Dr. Banyard got home he said to his wife--
"Helen, if I had to define a male criminal lunatic, I am inclined to think that I should say it was a man who brought up his women-folk in the lap of luxury without giving them the faintest inkling as to where the wherewithal to pay for that luxury came from."
His wife said mischievously--
"It is at least something for women-folk, as you so gracefully describe the salt of the earth, to be brought up in the lap of luxury; please remember that, sir. And pray what prompts this last illustration of the wisdom of the modern Solomon?"
"That man Lindsay; you know how he's been a mystery to all the country-side; the hints which have been dropped; the guesses which have been made; the clues which the curious have followed, ending in nothing; the positive libels which have been uttered. It turns out that he's as much a mystery to his own daughter as he is to anybody else; I've just had it from her own lips. The man lies dying, leaving her in complete ignorance of everything she ought to know--at the mercy, not impossibly, of those who do know. Just as God is calling him home he wants to tell her; I can see it in his eyes, and so can she; but he is dumb. Unless a miracle is worked he'll die silent, longing to tell her what he ought to have told her years ago."