“The next question is about the girl,” said my brother. “What has become of her? Where was she all the time of your illness?”
“At her father’s house; she is there still.”
“Ah, yes! I see; the old story; innocent, of course. And her father backs her, doesn’t he? To be sure, that’s the old story too. I have got at our difficulty now; we are threatened with an exposure, if you don’t acknowledge her. Wait a minute! Have you any evidence against her, besides your own?”
“I have a letter, a long letter from her accomplice, containing a confession of his guilt and hers.”
“She is sure to call that confession a conspiracy. It’s of no use to us, unless we dared to go to law—and we daren’t. We must hush the thing up at any price; or it will be the death of my father. This is a case for money, just as I thought it would be. Mr. and Miss Shopkeeper have got a large assortment of silence to sell; and we must buy it of them, over the domestic counter, at so much a yard. Have you been there yet, Basil, to ask the price and strike the bargain?”
“I was at the house, yesterday.”
“The deuce you were! And who did you see?—The father? Did you bring him to terms? did you do business with Mr. Shopkeeper?”
“His manner was brutal: his language, the language of a bully—?”
“So much the better. Those men are easiest dealt with: if he will only fly into a passion with me, I engage for success beforehand. But the end—how did it end?”
“As it began:—in threats on his part, in endurance on mine.”