Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. II, 1866.djvu/108

98 yet are molesting to a man of some reputation. But you may perhaps be happily free from such fears."

Jermyn drew round his chair towards the bureau, and Christian, too acute to persevere uselessly, said, "Good-day," and left the room.

After leaning back in his chair to reflect a few minutes, Jermyn wrote the following letter:—

Dear Johnson,—I learn from your letter, received this morning, that you intend returning to town on Saturday.

While you are there, be so good as to see Medwin, who used to be with Batt & Cowley, and ascertain from him indirectly, and in the course of conversation on other topics, whether in that old business in 1810-11, Scaddon alias Bycliffe, or Bycliffe alias ''Scaddon, before his imprisonment, gave Batt & Cowley any reason to believe that he was married and expected to have a child. The question, as you know, is of no practical importance; but I wish to draw up an abstract of the Bycliffe case, and the exact position in which it stood before the suit was closed by the death of the plaintiff, in order that, if Mr Harold Transome desires it, he may see how the failure of the last claim has secured the Durfey-Transome title,''