But Josina intervened. She, poor girl, saw light. “Yes,” she said, “my father did sign something—on Saturday after dinner. But it was a lease. I and Arthur witnessed it.”
“And what has that to do with it?” the Squire asked passionately. “What the devil has that to do with it? I signed a lease and—and a counterpart. I signed no transfer of stock, never put hand to it! Never! What has the lease to do with it?”
But Josina was firm. “I am afraid I see now, sir,” she said. “You remember that you signed a paper to try your pen? And I signed it too, father, by mistake? You remember? Ah!”—with a gesture of despair—“if I had only not signed it!”
The Squire groaned. He, too, saw it now. He saw it, and his head sank on his breast. “Forger as well as thief!” he muttered. “And a Griffin!”
And Clement’s heart sank too as he met the girl’s anguished eyes and viewed the Squire’s bowed head and the shame and despair that clothed themselves in an apathy so unlike the man. He saw that here was a tragedy indeed, a tragedy fitly framed in that desolate room with its windows staring on the night and its air of catastrophe; a tragedy passing bank failures or the loss of fortune. And in his mind he cursed the offender.
But even as the words rose to his lips, doubt stayed them. There was, there must be, some mistake. The thing could not be. He knew Arthur, he thought that he knew Arthur; he knew even the darker side of him—his selfishness, his lack of thought for others, his desire to get on and to grow rich. But this thing Arthur never could have done! Clement recalled his gay, smiling face, his frank bearing, his care-free eyes, the habit he had of casting back a lock from his brow. No, he could not have done this thing. “No, sir, no!” he cried impulsively. “There is some mistake! I swear there is! I am sure of it.”
“You’ve the securities?”
“Yes, but I am sure——”
“You’re all in it,” the Squire said drearily. And then, with energy and in a voice quivering with rage, “He’s learned this at your d—d counter, sir! That’s where it is. It’s like to like, that’s where it is. Like to like! I might ha’ known what would happen, when the lad set his mind on leaving our ways and taking up with yours. I might ha’ known that that was the blackest day our old house had ever seen—when he left the path his fathers trod and chose yours. You can’t touch pitch and keep your hands clean. You ha’ stole my daughter—d—n you, sir! And you ha’ taught him to steal my money. I mind me I bid your father think o’ Fauntleroy, I never thought he was breeding up a Fauntleroy in my house.” And, striking the table with all his old vitality, “You are thieves! thieves all o’ you! And you ha’ taught my lad to thieve!”
“That is not true!” Clement cried. “Not a word of that is true!”