"Six glasses of sherry before dessert,"thought Mr.Corbet to himself."Bad habit--no wonder Ellinor looks grave."And when the gentlemen were left alone,Mr.Wilkins helped himself even still more freely;yet without the slightest effect on the clearness and brilliancy of his conversation.He had always talked well and racily,that Ralph knew,and in this power he now recognised a temptation to which he feared that his future father-in-law had succumbed.And yet,while he perceived that this gift led into temptation,he coveted it for himself;for he was perfectly aware that this fluency,this happy choice of epithets,was the one thing he should fail in when he began to enter into the more active career of his profession.But after some time spent in listening,and admiring,with this little feeling of envy lurking in the background,Mr.Corbet became aware of Mr.Wilkins's increasing confusion of ideas,and rather unnatural merriment;and,with a sudden revulsion from admiration to disgust,he rose up to go into the library,where Ellinor and Miss Monro were sitting.Mr.Wilkins accompanied him,laughing and talking somewhat loudly.Was Ellinor aware of her father's state?Of that Mr.Corbet could not be sure.She looked up with grave sad eyes as they came into the room,but with no apparent sensation of surprise,annoyance,or shame.When her glance met her father's,Mr.Corbet noticed that it seemed to sober the latter immediately.He sat down near the open window,and did not speak,but sighed heavily from time to time.Miss Monro took up a book,in order to leave the young people to themselves;and after a little low murmured conversation,Ellinor went upstairs to put on her things for a stroll through the meadows by the river-side.
They were sometimes sauntering along in the lovely summer twilight,now resting on some grassy hedge-row bank,or standing still,looking at the great barges,with their crimson sails,lazily floating down the river,making ripples on the glassy opal surface of the water.
They did not talk very much;Ellinor seemed disinclined for the exertion;and her lover was thinking over Mr.Wilkins's behaviour,with some surprise and distaste of the habit so evidently growing upon him.
They came home,looking serious and tired:yet they could not account for their fatigue by the length of their walk,and Miss Monro,forgetting Autolycus's song,kept fidgeting about Ellinor,and wondering how it was she looked so pale,if she had only been as far as the Ash Meadow.To escape from this wonder,Ellinor went early to bed.Mr.Wilkins was gone,no one knew where,and Ralph and Miss Monro were left to a half-hour's tete-a-tete.He thought he could easily account for Ellinor's languor,if,indeed,she had perceived as much as he had done of her father's state,when they had come into the library after dinner.But there were many details which he was anxious to hear from a comparatively indifferent person,and as soon as he could,he passed on from the conversation about Ellinor's health,to inquiries as to the whole affair of Mr.Dunster's disappearance.
Next to her anxiety about Ellinor,Miss Monro liked to dilate on the mystery connected with Mr.Dunster's flight;for that was the word she employed without hesitation,as she gave him the account of the event universally received and believed in by the people of Hamley.
How Mr.Dunster had never been liked by any one;how everybody remembered that he could never look them straight in the face;how he always seemed to be hiding something that he did not want to have known;how he had drawn a large sum (exact quantity unknown)out of the county bank only the day before he left Hamley,doubtless in preparation for his escape;how some one had told Mr.Wilkins he had seen a man just like Dunster lurking about the docks at Liverpool,about two days after he had left his lodgings,but that this some one,being in a hurry,had not cared to stop and speak to the man;how that the affairs in the office were discovered to be in such a sad state that it was no wonder that Mr.Dunster had absconded--he that had been so trusted by poor dear Mr.Wilkins.Money gone no one knew how or where.
"But has he no friends who can explain his proceedings,and account for the missing money,in some way?"asked Mr.Corbet.
"No,none.Mr.Wilkins has written everywhere,right and left,Ibelieve.I know he had a letter from Mr.Dunster's nearest relation--a tradesman in the City--a cousin,I think,and he could give no information in any way.He knew that about ten years ago Mr.Dunster had had a great fancy for going to America,and had read a great many travels--all just what a man would do before going off to a country.""Ten years is a long time beforehand,"said Mr.Corbet,half smiling;"shows malice prepense with a vengeance."But then,turning grave,he said:"Did he leave Hamley in debt?""No;I never heard of that,"said Miss Monro,rather unwillingly,for she considered it as a piece of loyalty to the Wilkinses,whom Mr.
Dunster had injured (as she thought)to blacken his character as much as was consistent with any degree of truth.
"It is a strange story,"said Mr.Corbet,musing.
"Not at all,"she replied,quickly;"I am sure,if you had seen the man,with one or two side-locks of hair combed over his baldness,as if he were ashamed of it,and his eyes that never looked at you,and his way of eating with his knife when he thought he was not observed--oh,and numbers of things!--you would not think it strange."Mr.Corbet smiled.