"To Mr. Archdale," she answered.
It was not Mr. Royal's way to protest or deny; he liked to get in his evidence first of all. "What makes you think so?" he asked.
"A good many little things that have come back to me in confirmation, but especially a speech of Mr. Edmonson's that I overheard one day at Seascape. Stray shots," he said, "have taken off more superfluous kings and men than the world has any idea of. I did not know at the time whom he had been speaking about, and I forgot the speech; it seemed to me to have no object. But now it does, and now I remember a word or two besides that showed me that he had turned the conversation upon Mr. Archdale."
"When was this?"
"One morning when I was coming up from the beach, I didn't feel like talking to anyone, and when I heard voices the other side of the great boulder—you remember it?—I waited a moment, to see if they would pass on, so that I need not go back to the house by the longest way; and it was then that he said it. He was with Lord Bulchester. He was speaking of other things first, and then I missed a few words, and then he said this."
"So far as he was concerned," answered Mr. Royal, "that might be as innocent a speech as ever was uttered. Indeed, don't you see that a man who meditated mischief wouldn't make such a speech at all?"
"If the man were Mr. Edmonson he might, and to Lord Bulchester who, he knows, never would do anything against him. But Lord Bulchester is uncomfortable. I saw it yesterday; and perhaps wondering over that was what made me put everything together. I don't know how it was, but I awoke in the night and saw it all. And now they have gone where the will and the opportunity are sure to meet. Mr. Archdale must be warned."
"But, Elizabeth," said her father, "why should he want to do it? He succeeded in his designs upon the Archdale property. What malice can he have?" As he spoke, he looked earnestly at his daughter. He had not been blind to things going on about him, and especially things concerning his daughter, but in a case like this no suppositions of his own were to take the place of evidence.
Elizabeth met his eyes for a moment, then her own drooped and she grew pale. It was not that her father's eyes told her his thoughts, it was at the humiliation of her own position in being the object of mercenary scheming. "He has not enough money," she said at last distinctly, "and he wants more. That's what it means. And he dares to think—." She stopped short, and for a moment it seemed as if it would be impossible for her to go on; a hot flush came to her face and an angry light into her eyes. Then her courage returned, and although she uttered the words with visible effort she went resolutely on. "I know it," she said, "he dares to think someone else,—Mr. Archdale,—is somewhat like himself, and that he will come to want more money too. He cares for nobody, he would stop at nothing, and he thinks that I refused him because,—he does not understand how I feel towards him. Oh, don't you know that sometimes you know all about a thing, know it perfectly, and cannot make it seem so to another? Don't let it be so with you, father. Only listen to me." Mr. Royal did listen attentively as she went over the points of her story again. Had she been talking of some matter of business, her inexperience and a something about her that people were apt to call unpracticalness, might have decided him against giving any unusual weight to a speech like Edmonson's. But here the weight of her character, and of impressions stronger than she could put into words told. He saw, too, that she was looking at the matter with the accuracy and judgment that it usually takes years of training to learn. This, added to her own intensity, gave a convincing force to her words. He admitted to himself that the affair had an ugly look.