'If something had been saved and put away, we must have found it.'
Dench remained looking steadily at Jack, but his thoughts were elsewhere.
'You don't think,' mused he, and he spoke to himself rather than to Jack, 'you don't think as how Jane Marley may have scented it, and have secured it, and got it now in that chest of hers. We have looked everywhere else. She is away now at Bindon. Let us prize open the lock and search it from end to end. I warrant it is there. It can be nowhere else that I can think of.'
'No,' answered Jack emphatically. 'To that I will not consent. If she chooses voluntarily to open, that will be another matter, but in her absence, without her knowledge—never.'
'Why not?'
'Because it is not right, and she a poor woman. I would rather let her have it than commit such an outrage.'
'You would, would you?'
'Certainly,' with some heat. 'Besides, I owe Winefred a debt of gratitude, and I will not repay it by an insult offered to her mother.'
'Well! men are made in different fashions and out of various clays. What, then, is to be done?'
'There is but one thing can be done—accept the situation. I must make up my mind to knock about till I can find work that will suit me. I have not expected much. If there had been a trifle I should have been well pleased; had there been much, my father would have given me to understand that it was so.'