‘I will try to tell you then. I come here as a father’—down came the riding-whip upon the table—‘I have right and justice upon my side. I understand your calculations, but you calculated without me. I am a man of the world, and I see through you and your manœuvres. I am dealing now with a conspiracy—I stigmatise it as such, and I will expose it and crush it. And now I order you to tell me how far things have gone, and whither you have smuggled my unhappy son.’
‘My God, sir!’ Van Tromp broke out, ‘I have had about enough of this. Your son? God knows where he is for me! What the devil have I to do with your son? My daughter is out, for the matter of that; I might ask you where she was, and what would you say to that? But this is all midsummer madness. Name your business distinctly, and be off.’
‘How often am I to tell you?’ cried the Squire. ‘Where did your daughter take my son to-day in that cursed pony carriage?’
‘In a pony carriage?’ repeated Van Tromp.
‘Yes, sir—with luggage.’
‘Luggage?’—Van Tromp had turned a little pale.
‘Luggage, I said—luggage!’ shouted Naseby. ‘You may spare me this dissimulation. Where’s my son. You are speaking to a father, sir, a father.’
‘But, sir, if this be true,’ out came Van Tromp in a new key, ‘it is I who have an explanation to demand?’
‘Precisely. There is the conspiracy,’ retorted Naseby. ‘Oh!’ he added, ‘I am a man of the world. I can see through and through you.’
Van Tromp began to understand.