'There is old Mother Olney,' Mr. Pomeroy answered, assenting with a readier grace than the tutor expected, 'who locked herself up an hour ago for fear of us young bloods. She should be old and ugly enough! Here you, Jarvey, go and kick in her outworks, and bid her come down.'
'Better still, if I may suggest it,' said the tutor, who was above all things anxious to be rid of the girl before too much was said--'Might not your servant take Miss above stairs to this good woman--who will doubtless see to her comfort? Miss Masterson has gone through some surprising adventures this evening, and I think it were better if you allowed her to withdraw at once, Mr. Pomeroy.'
'Jarvey, take the lady,' Mr. Pomeroy cried. 'A sweet pretty toad she is. Here's to your eyes and fortune, child!' he continued with an impudent grin; and filling his glass he pledged her as she passed.
After that he stood watching while Mr. Thomasson opened the door and bowed her out; and this done and the door closed after her, 'Lord, what ceremony!' he said, with an ugly sneer. 'Is't real, man, or are you bubbling her? And what is this Cock-lane story of a chaise and the rest? Out with it, unless you want to be tossed in a blanket.'
'True, upon my honour!' Mr. Thomasson asseverated.
'Oh, but Tommy, the fortune?' Lord Almeric protested seriously. 'I vow you are sharping us.'
'True too, my lord, as I hope to be saved!'
'True? Oh, but it is too monstrous absurd,' my lord wailed. 'The Little Masterson? As pretty a little tit as was to be found in all Oxford. The Little Masterson a fortune?'
'She has eyes and a shape,' Mr. Pomeroy admitted generously. 'For the rest, what is the figure, Mr. Thomasson?' he continued. 'There are fortunes and fortunes.'
Mr. Thomasson looked at the gallery above, and thence, and slyly, to his companions and back again to the gallery; and swallowed something that rose in his throat. At length he seemed to make up his mind to speak the truth, though when he did so it was in a voice little above a whisper. 'Fifty thousand,' he said, and looked guiltily round him.
Lord Almeric rose from his chair as if on springs. 'Oh, I protest!' he said. 'You are roasting us. Fifty thousand! It's a bite?'
But Mr. Thomasson nodded. 'Fifty thousand,' he repeated softly. 'Fifty thousand.'
'Pounds?' gasped my lord. 'The Little Masterson?'
The tutor nodded again; and without asking leave, with a dogged air unlike his ordinary bearing when he was in the company of those above him, he drew a decanter towards him, and filling a glass with a shaking hand raised it to his lips and emptied it. The three were on their feet round the table, on which several candles, luridly lighting up their faces, still burned; while others had flickered down, and smoked in the guttering sockets, among the empty bottles and the litter of cards. In one corner of the table the lees of wine had run upon the oak, and dripped to the floor, and formed a pool, in which a broken glass lay in fragments beside the overturned chair. An observant eye might have found on the panels below the gallery the vacant nails and dusty lines whence Lelys and Knellers, Cuyps and Hondekoeters had looked down on two generations of Pomeroys. But in the main the disorder of the scene centred in the small table and the three men standing round it; a lighted group, islanded in the shadows of the hall.
Mr. Pomeroy waited with impatience until Mr. Thomasson lowered his glass. Then, 'Let us have the story,' he said. 'A guinea to a China orange the fool is tricking us.'
The tutor shook his head, and turned to Lord Almeric. 'You know Sir George Soane,' he said. 'Well, my lord, she is his cousin.'
'Oh, tally, tally!' my lord cried. 'You--you are romancing, Tommy!'
'And under the will of Sir George's grandfather she takes fifty thousand pounds, if she make good her claim within a certain time from to-day.'
'Oh, I say, you are romancing!' my lord repeated, more feebly. 'You know, you really should not! It is too uncommon absurd, Tommy.'
'It's true!' said Mr. Thomasson.
'What? That this porter's wench at Pembroke has fifty thousand pounds?' cried Mr. Pomeroy. 'She is the porter's wench, isn't she?' he continued. Something had sobered him. His eyes shone, and the veins stood out on his forehead. But his manner was concise and harsh, and to the point.
Mr. Thomasson. glanced at him stealthily, as one gamester scrutinises another over the cards. 'She is Masterson, the porter's, foster-child,' he said.
'But is it certain that she has the money?' the other cried rudely. 'Is it true, man? How do you know? Is it public property?'
'No,' Mr. Thomasson answered, 'it is not public property. But it is certain and it is true!' Then, after a moment's hesitation, 'I saw some papers--by accident,' he said, his eyes on the gallery.
'Oh, d--n your accident!' Mr. Pomeroy cried brutally. 'You are very fine to-night. You were not used to be a Methodist! Hang it, man, we know you,' he continued violently, 'and this is not all! This does not bring you and the girl tramping the country, knocking at doors at midnight with Cock-lane stories of chaises and abductions. Come to it, man, or--'
'Oh, I say,' Lord Almeric protested weakly. 'Tommy is an honest man in his way, and you are too stiff with him.'
'D--n him! my lord; let him come to the point then,' Mr. Pomeroy retorted savagely. 'Is she in the way to get the money?'
'She is,' said the tutor sullenly.
'Then what brings her here--with you, of all people?'
'I will tell you if you will give me time, Mr. Pomeroy,' the tutor said plaintively. And he proceeded to describe in some detail all that had happened, from the _fons et origo mali_--Mr. Dunborough's passion for the girl--to the stay at the Castle Inn, the abduction at Manton Corner, the strange night journey in the chaise, and the stranger release.
When he had done, 'Sir George was the girl's fancy-man, then?' Pomeroy said, in the harsh overbearing tone he had suddenly adopted.
The tutor nodded.
'And she thinks he has tricked her?'
'But for that and the humour she is in,' Mr. Thomasson answered, with a subtle glance at the other's face, 'you and I might talk here till Doomsday, and be none the better, Mr. Pomeroy.'
His frankness provoked Mr. Pomeroy to greater frankness. 'Consume your impertinence!' he cried. 'Speak for yourself.'
'She is not that kind of woman,' said Mr. Thomasson firmly.
'Kind of woman?' cried Mr. Pomeroy furiously. 'I am this kind of man. Oh, d--n you! If you want plain speaking you shall have it! She has fifty thousand, and she is in my house; well, I am this kind of man! I'll not let that money go out of the house without having a fling at it! It is the devil's luck has sent her here, and it will be my folly will send her away--if she goes. Which she does not if I am the kind of man I think I am. So there for you! There's plain speaking.'
'You don't know her,' Mr. Thomasson answered doggedly. 'Mr. Dunborough is a gentleman of mettle, and he could not bend her.'
'She was not in his house!' the other retorted, with a grim laugh. Then, in a lower, if not more amicable tone, 'Look here, man,' he continued, 'd'ye mean to say that you had not something of this kind in your mind when you knocked at this door?'
'I!' Mr. Thomasson cried, virtuously indignant.
'Ay, you! Do you mean to say you did not see that here was a chance in a hundred? In a thousand? Ay, in a million? Fifty thousand pounds is not found in the road any day?'
Mr. Thomasson grinned in a sickly fashion. 'I know that,' he said.
'Well, what is your idea? What do you