Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. I, 1866.djvu/279

Rh the affair was not taking the turn Mr Scales had intended. At last, when dinner had been removed, and the butler's chief duties were at an end, it was understood that Christian had entered without his coat-tail, looking serious and even agitated; that he had asked leave at once to speak to Mr Debarry; and that he was even then in parley with the gentlemen in the dining-room. Scales was in alarm; it must have been some property of Mr Debarry's that had weighted the pocket. He took a lantern, got a groom to accompany him with another lantern, and with the utmost practicable speed reached the fatal spot in the park. He searched under the elms—he was certain that the pocket had fallen there—and he found the pocket; but he found it empty, and, in spite of further search, did not find the contents, though he had at first consoled himself with thinking that they had fallen out, and would be lying not far off. He returned with the lanterns and the coat-tail and a most uncomfortable consciousness in that great seat of a butler's emotion, the stomach. He had no sooner re-entered than he was met by Mrs Cherry, pale and anxious who drew him aside to say that if he didn't tell everything, she would; that the constables were to be sent for; that there had been no end of bank-