‘The villains must have found entrance here!’ he cried, rushing towards the window. And clambering up an old oaken bureau that stood near it, he pushed it wide open, and stretching his long, scraggy neck through it, gazed into the little garden beneath.
Unable to discover anything, he drew back, and casting his eyes over the bureau, perceived that the dust with which it was covered had been slightly brushed away; but whether by himself or the depredators, it was now, of course, impossible to determine.
A bottle standing on one corner of the bureau had not been removed. It was clear that the plunderers had gone direct to the chest, of which they must have possessed a key, for the lock, though strained, had not been forced. Maddened by these reflections, and unable to account for the occurrence, he again vented his fury in words. ‘I have it!’ he shrieked, ‘it is that accursed Welsh baronet who has robbed me. He paid me the money in this public way only to delude me. I’ll charge him with the robbery—I’ll prove it against him—I’ll hang him! Oh! it would delight me to hang him! I would give a thousand pounds to see it done! A thousand pounds! What is that to the fourteen thousand I have lost? I shall go mad, and it were happy for me to do so. Philip Frewin will refuse to marry my daughter. Her portion is gone—gone! Why was I tempted forth with Firebras? I ought to have taken my seat on that chest—to have eaten my meals upon it—to have slept upon it! Night nor day should I have quitted it! Fool that I have been!
I have been rightly served—rightly served! And yet it is hard upon me, an old man, to lose all I held dear—very hard!’ And falling upon his knees, with his hands clasped together, beside the vacant chest, he wept aloud.
This paroxysm of rage and grief having subsided, he again rose and descended to the parlour, where he found Mrs. Clinton anxiously waiting his reappearance. She instantly divined what had happened, and retreated before him as he advanced, almost fearing from his looks that he would do her a violence. Shaking his clenched hand, and foaming at the mouth, he attempted to discharge a volley of imprecations against her; but rage took away the power of speech, and he stood gesticulating and shaking before her—a frightful and pitiable spectacle.
‘For Heaven’s sake, sir, compose yourself,’ she cried, ‘or you will have a fit of some dangerous illness. You terrify me to death.’
‘I am glad of it,’ he shrieked. ‘I have been robbed—the mortgage money is gone—the fourteen thousand pounds. D’ye hear, woman? I’ve been robbed, I say—robbed!’
‘I feared as much,’ replied Mrs. Clinton; ‘but the robbery cannot have been long effected, for just before you knocked at the door, I heard a window creak, as I thought, in your room.’
‘You did!’ screamed the miser. ‘And why did you not tell me this before? I might have caught them—might have got back the spoil.’
‘If you hadn’t frightened me so much about Hilda, I should have told you,’ replied Mrs. Clinton, in a deprecatory tone; ‘but your violence put it out of my head.’