Page:The Last Chronicle of Barset Vol 2.djvu/333

Rh about the cheque, and that you're as right as a trivet?" They were still on the little causeway leading from the school up to the road, and Henry Grantly was waiting for them at the small wicket-gate. "Mr. Crawley," said the major, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I could not but accompany my friend, Mr. Toogood, when he brought you this good news."

"I do not even yet altogether comprehend what has been told to me," said Crawley, now standing out on the road between the other two men. "I am doubtless dull,—very dull. May I beg some clearer word of explanation before I ask you to go with me to my wife?"

"The cheque was given to you by my aunt Eleanor."

"Your aunt Eleanor!" said Crawley, now altogether in the clouds. Who was the major's aunt Eleanor? Though he had, no doubt, at different times heard all the circumstances of the connection, he had never realized the fact that his daughter's lover was the nephew of his old friend, Arabin.

"Yes; by my aunt, Mrs. Arabin."

"She put it into the envelope with the notes," said Toogood;—"slipped it in without saying a word to any one. I never heard of a woman doing such a mad thing in my life before. If she had died, or if we hadn't caught her, where should we all have been? Not but what I think I should have run Dan Stringer to ground too, and worked it out of him."

"Then, after all, it was given to me by the dean?" said Crawley, drawing himself up.

"It was in the envelope, but the dean did not know it," said the major.

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Crawley, "I was sure of it. I knew it. Weak as my mind may be,—and at times it is very weak,—I was certain that I could not have erred in such a matter. The more I struggled with my memory, the more fixed with me became the fact,—which I had forgotten but for a moment,—that the document had formed a part of that small packet handed to me by the dean. But look you, sirs,—bear with me yet for a moment. I said that it was so, and the dean denied it."

"The dean did not know it, man," said Toogood, almost in a passion.

"Bear with me yet awhile. So far have I been from misdoubting the dean,—whom I have long known to be in all things a true and honest gentleman,—that I postponed the elaborated result of my own memory to his word. And I felt myself the more constrained to do