A workman brought up another candle from the vault, and prepared to let down the slab. ‘Well, Mr. Power, and what is that one thing?’
‘Go to Peru as my agent in a business I have just undertaken there.’
‘And settle there?’
‘Of course. I am soon going over myself, and will bring you anything you require.’
‘How long will you give me to consider?’ said Dare.
Power looked at his watch. ‘One, two, three, four hours,’ he said. ‘I leave Markton by the seven o’clock train this evening.’
‘And if I meet your proposal with a negative?’
‘I shall go at once to my niece and tell her the whole circumstances—tell her that, by marrying Sir William, she allies herself with an unhappy gentleman in the power of a criminal son who makes his life a burden to him by perpetual demands upon his purse; who will increase those demands with his accession to wealth, threaten to degrade her by exposing her husband’s antecedents if she opposes his extortions, and who will make her miserable by letting her know that her old lover was shamefully victimized by a youth she is bound to screen out of respect to her husband’s feelings. Now a man does not care to let his own flesh and blood incur the danger of such anguish as that, and I shall do what I say to prevent it. Knowing what a lukewarm sentiment hers is for Sir William at best, I shall not have much difficulty.’
‘Well, I don’t feel inclined to go to Peru.’
‘Neither do I want to break off the match, though I am ready to do it. But you care about your personal freedom, and you might be made to wear the broad arrow for your tricks on Somerset.’