"I should regret it all my life if I didn't."
"Think over it. Don't act hastily."
And as he spoke there was something like a tremor of anger in the suave voice.
"I've done my thinking already," said Arthur. "There's only one thing more I want to say. If the transaction were never so honest, there's a weak place in your scheme which I think my father will appreciate. It is that he has only your word for it, Mr. Scales, that the Amalgamated will, buy the property, and, to be quite frank, I don't trust your word."
He left the room and went to bed. The next morning he returned to Brighton. The first thing that met his eyes as he entered his room was a letter from Elizabeth.
VIII
THE ACCUSATION
It was a very brief note, simply informing him that Hilary Vickars was ill, and wished to see him.
An hour later he was in the train. Fortunately he had written his report of the Leatham business before he left the village, and this he left upon his father's desk. As he went up to London he read and re-read Elizabeth's brief note, in a conflict of torture and delight. There was but one phrase in it which impressed the personality of the writer. "I am alone with father, and very anxious," she wrote. He felt the throb of her heart in those words, and he realised that she leaned on him for strength. His own heart swelled with tenderness at the thought. There is a kind of pain which is so exquisite that it becomes joy; he realised such a pain now, an immense yearning to take the lonely girl to his bosom, and kiss her wet eyelids, and defend her from the imminent sword of sorrow.