‘It would be,’ responded the lawyer, ‘if it were not for that cowardly drunken villain, who stops us puttin’ it into execution.’
‘But he won’t,’ said the other. ‘My mind’s made up. It’s that or nothing.’
‘But if he splits?’ said Richard.
‘Split!’ repeated Conseltine. ‘The job once done, he has my leave to split as wide as the Liffey. It’s one oath against three—the oath of a drunken blackguard and beggar against the oaths of three men of substance and position.’
‘And sure that’s true,’ said Feagus. ‘By the Lord, Mr. Conseltine, ye should have taken to our profession. Ye’d have been an honour to it.’
‘Besides,’ said Conseltine, ‘he’ll not split. He has his own skin to save, and he’s as deep in the mud as we are in the mire.’ He paused, and looked round cautiously. The plain stretched to the mountains on the one side and the sea on the other, empty of any possible observer. ‘We mustn’t be seen together,’ continued Conseltine. ‘We’d better separate here. But before we part, we’ll just arrange the details.’
CHAPTER X.—ANOTHER INTERVIEW.
The shades of evening were beginning to envelop the landscape as Peebles made his slow and toilsome way towards Blake’s Hall. The old man had been in a ferment of excitement all day long, and nothing but his long years of habit as chief officer and general director of Lord Kilpatrick’s household had sufficed to hold him back from fulfilling his momently recurring desire to throw his duties to the winds for that day, and at once proceed to put to Blake the question dictated to him by Moya Macartney. His discomposure had not escaped the notice of his master, who, since the shock occasioned by Desmond’s renunciation of him and his abrupt departure from the house, had kept his room, and had resented all approaches, even that of his favourite Dulcie, with an exaggeration of his usual snappish ill-temper.