"No, he is not married," Sir Hervey answered; "nor is he going to be yet awhile."
"Thank God!" she exclaimed. And then, as their eyes met, she remembered herself, and quailed, the blushes burning in her cheeks. She had not seen him since the evening at Vauxhall, when he had laboured to open her eyes to Hawkesworth's true character. The things that had happened, the things she had done since that evening crowded into her mind; she could have sunk into the floor for very shame. She did not know how much he knew or how much worse than she was he might be thinking her; and in an agony of recollection she covered her face and shrank from him.
"Come, child, come, you are safe now," he said hurriedly; he understood her feelings. "I suppose they locked you here that you might not interfere? Eh, was that it?" he continued, seizing Grocott's ear and twisting it until the old rogue grovelled on the floor. "Eh, was that it?"
"Oh, yes, yes," the clock-maker cried. "That was it! I'll beg the lady's pardon. I'll do anything! I'll----"
"You'll hang--some day!" Sir Hervey answered, releasing him with a final twist. "Begone for this time, and thank your stars I don't haul you to the nearest justice! And do you, child, come to your brother. He is in the next room."
But when Sophia had so far conquered her agitation as to be able to comply, they found no Tom there; only a scrap of paper, bearing a line or two of writing, lay on the table.
"I'm gone to enlist, or something, I don't care what. It doesn't matter," it ran. "Don't come after me, for I shan't come back. Let Sophy have my setter pup, it's at the hall. I see it now; it was a trap. If I meet H. I shall kill him.--T. M."
"He has found her out, then?" Sophia said tearfully.
"Yes," Sir Hervey answered, standing at the table and drumming on it with his fingers, while he looked at her and wondered what was to be done next. "He has found her out. In a year he will be none the worse and a little wiser."
"But if he enlists?" she murmured.