‘I fail to comprehend you, Mr Hold,’ said the baronet stiffly.
The other laughed. ‘Her name,’ he said, ‘is Ruth.’
‘Ruth!’ exclaimed Sir Sykes, starting from his seat, and speaking so unguardedly that the unwashed crew at the firelit end of the room turned to peer at him.
‘Yes, Ruth. Don’t you like the name?’ asked the fellow coarsely. ‘My sister, Ruth Hold.’
‘Ruth—your sister—yours—at Carbery?’ gasped out the bewildered baronet.
‘You need not be afraid,’ was the rough reply: ‘she won’t disgrace your fine house or your dainty ways. I doubt if your misses at home are more thoroughly the lady than Ruth Hold—my—sister.’
‘You must see, your own good sense must shew you,’ stammered out Sir Sykes, looking the picture of abject terror, as the smoky glare of the lamp fell on his pale face, ‘that even were I willing to consent to so extraordinary—— In short it cannot be.’
‘Sorry for you, then!’ returned Hold with a shrug; ‘for on your acceptance of these terms alone is my silence to be bought. Come, come, shipmate! hear reason. Ruth shall bear any surname you like, and it can’t be hard to account for her coming to Carbery. You knew her father—an old friend—military—died in India—left you her guardian, Ruth’s guardian; eh, Sir Sykes?’
‘I—I will take time to think of it,’ said the baronet confusedly. ‘You shall hear from me to-morrow. And now, I had better go.’
And he rose. Hold re-conducted him, civilly enough, as far as the outer door, and watched him depart through the howling wind and driving rain towards Carbery. But what neither Hold nor Sir Sykes could have conjectured was that Jasper Denzil, hidden in a crazy arbour among the sunflowers and pot-herbs of the inn garden, hard by the open window, had during the greater portion of the interview played the part of an unsuspected eavesdropper, and was now on his way by another route to Carbery Chase.