“Pshaw! Ye're a fool, Rotherby--a fool, and there's an end on't,” said his mother. “I sometimes wonder which is the greater fool--you or your father. And yet he can marvel that you are his son. What do ye think would have happened if you had had your way with that bread-and-butter miss? It had been matter enough to hang you.”
“Pooh!” said the viscount, dropping into a chair and staring sullenly at the carpet. Then sullenly he added: “His lordship would have been glad on't--so some one would have been pleased. As it is--”
“As it is, ye'd better find the man Green who was at Maidstone, and stop his mouth with guineas. He is aware of what passed.”
“Bah! Green was there on other business.” And he told her of the suspicions the messenger entertained against Mr. Caryll.
It set her ladyship thinking. “Why,” she said presently, “'twill be that!”
“'Twill be what, ma'am?” asked Rotherby, looking up.
“Why, this fellow Caryll must ha' bubbled the messenger in spite of the search he may have made. I found the popinjay here with your father, the pair as thick as thieves--and your father with a paper in his hand as fine as a cobweb. 'Sdeath! I'll be sworn he's a damned Jacobite.”
Rotherby was on his feet in an instant. He remembered suddenly all that he had overheard at Maidstone. “Oho!” he crowed. “What cause have ye to think that?”
“Cause? Why, what I have seen. Besides, I feel it in my bones. My every instinct tells me 'tis so.”
“If you should prove right! Oh, if you should prove right! Death! I'd find a way to settle the score of that pert fellow from France, and to dictate terms to his lordship at the same time.”
Her ladyship stared at him. “Ye're an unnatural hound, Rotherby. Would ye betray your own father?”
“Betray him? No! But I'll set a term to his plotting. Egad! Has he not lost enough in the South Sea Bubble, without sinking the little that is left in some wild-goose Jacobite plot?”
“How shall it matter to you, since he's sworn to disinherit you?”
“How, madam?” Rotherby laughed cunningly. “I'll prevent the one and the other--and pay off Mr. Caryll at the same time. Three birds with one stone, let me perish!” He reached for his hat. “I must find this fellow Green.”
“What will you do?” she asked, a slight anxiety trembling in her voice.