"I really don't know; excuse me--how very warm this room is! I will go into the balcony and see if it is possible to get a little air;" and he turned on his heel and left me.
"So so," thought I, "you wanted to fasten yourself upon me with the dodge of knowing my friends, did you? It won't do, my fine fellow;" and I determined to give my brother-in-law a hint that his wife's "last treasure-trove" would need watching. But I found no opportunity; and when I inquired for Mr. de Vos later in the evening, I heard he had gone away, feeling very unwell. Said I to myself, "He'll be worse when he meets me again." I little recked the words then, or what they might import.
It was a beautiful August night when our party broke up; and resisting my sister's wish that I should sleep there, I determined to enjoy a moonlight walk home, smoke a cigar, and think over a difficult case I had just then in hand. My nearest way into town from Elinor's house was down Swain's Lane and round by the cemetery; it was a lonely, ghostly kind of walk, not tempting on a dark winter's night; but with a brilliant harvest-moon overhead, a stout stick, and myself standing six feet without shoes, I feared neither man nor ghost. The tombstones looked white and ghastly enough in the bright moonlight, and the trees cast their heavy shadows across my path, whilst their tops were stirred by a gentle soughing breeze. I had passed the cemetery, and was rapidly nearing the end of the lane, which turns into the high-road by the Duke of St. Alban's public-house, of omnibus notoriety, when I fancied I heard the sound of voices pitched high, as if [{448}] in some angry dispute. I took out my watch; it was just upon twelve o'clock. Drunken revellers, I thought, turned out of the inn. Swain's Lane winds about until you are close upon the road, and then there is a straight piece with fields upon either side. I looked ahead as I came to this latter bit, but there was no one to be seen, although the voices sounded closer and closer. I was walking on the turf beside the road, so that my footsteps falling upon the soft grass were inaudible. I passed a gate leading into a field, and then I became aware that the voices were close to me on the other side of the hedge. Not caring to be seen lest I should get drawn into some drunken row, I stooped my head and shoulders, inconveniently high just then, and was in the act of passing swiftly on when a name arrested me. "I tell you Hugh Atherton never shall marry that girl!"
"And I tell you he will! You let every chance slip by you, you poor spiritless fool. He'll marry her, and come in for the best share, if not the whole of Gil Thorneley's money."
There was no mistaking the brogue of my Irish Anglo-French acquaintance of this evening--my sister's "last treasure-trove, the talented author, the rich man." But the other voice, whose was it? It sounded strange at first; then light began to dawn upon me. I knew it--yes, surely I knew it. Ha, by Jove! Lister Wilmot!--it must be Lister Wilmot's.
They were speaking again, quite unconscious of their auditor on the other side of the hedge.
"You are the biggest fool, and a scoundrel too, coming here, dogging my footsteps, and following me about just to bring ruin upon me with your confounded interference; going there too, and meeting the very man you ought to avoid, that lawyer fellow, Kavanagh; why, he'll scent you out in less than no time." (Much obliged to you, Mr. Wilmot, thought I, for your involuntary tribute to my shrewdness: it has been deserved this time at any rate.) "You must leave London at once--to-morrow, do you hear?--or I'll whisper a certain affair about, which may make this quarter of the world unpleasant to you."
"I'll not stir without that fifty pounds. You blow upon me, and I'll blow upon you in a quarter you wouldn't care to have those small bits of paper shown that I've got in my pocket-book here."
The remark seemed to have been untimely.
"Scoundrel!" shouted the other voice I believed to be Wilmot's, and I heard them close together and struggle.