Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/103

 and gamester, would William Losely have been the convicted felon? He checked that thought, and hurried on: "And how did William Losely reply?"

"He made no reply--he skulked away without a word." Darrell then proceeded to relate the interview which Jasper had forced on him at Fawley during Lionel's visit there--on Jasper's part an attempt to tell the same tale as William had told--on Darrell's part, the same scornful refusal to hear it out. "And," added Darrell, "the man, finding it thus impossible to dupe my reason, had the inconceivable meanness to apply to me for alms. I could not better show the disdain in which I held himself and his story than in recognising his plea as a mendicant. I threw my purse at his feet, and so left him.

"But," continued Darrell, his brow growing darker and darker--"but wild and monstrous as the story was, still the idea that it MIGHT be true--a supposition which derived its sole strength from the character of Jasper Losely--from the interest he had in the supposed death of a child that alone stood between himself and the money he longed to grasp--an interest which ceased when the money itself was gone, or rather changed into the counter-interest of proving a life that, he thought, would re-establish a hold on me--still, I say, an idea that the story might be true would force itself on my fears, and if so, though my resolution never to acknowledge the child of Jasper Losely as a representative, or even as a daughter, of my house, would of course be immovable--yet it would become my duty to see that her infancy was sheltered, her childhood reared, her youth guarded, her existence amply provided for."

"Right--your plain duty," said Alban bluntly. "Intricate sometimes are the obligations imposed on us as gentlemen; 'noblesse oblige' is a motto which involves puzzles for a casuist; but our duties as men are plain--the idea very properly haunted you--and--"

"And I hastened to exorcise the spectre. I left England--I went to the French town in which poor Matilda died--I could not, of course, make formal or avowed inquiries of a nature to raise into importance the very conspiracy (if conspiracy there were) which threatened me. But I saw the physician who had attended both my daughter and her child--I sought those who had seen them both