"Father." It was a small beginning, and followed by silence. But the tone made Mr. Royal push his work aside, and look full into his daughter's face. "Father," she repeated, "I want you to advise me."
"Am I not always ready for that?" returned Mr. Royal, his smile fading before the gravity of her expression.
"There is something so hard to be done," she answered.
"Oh, yes, that's the only thing about it I am quite sure of. It must be done, and directly, too. It may be too late now, but we must try. What troubles me is how it can be done so that we may be certain."
"Certain that it reaches him," answered Elizabeth. Then she looked at her father, and remembered that he could not understand her. "I must tell you," she said. "It is like a nightmare. It oppresses me to think of it. I feel guilty to believe it, and yet I don't dare to deny it to myself, for fear of the consequences. It's about Mr. Edmonson, father."
"Oh!" said her listener in a tone far from pleased.
"And Mr. Archdale, added Elizabeth. Not that who the people are makes any difference. Our duties would be just the same knowing the,--knowing what I do." Her father sat watching her in silence with his keenest gaze. "There is no love lost between the two men, as you know," she went on. "Mr. Archdale is lofty, and wouldn't condescend to anything more than a dislike that he hasn't tried to conceal, since Mr. Edmonson ceased being his guest. But with Mr. Edmonson it's different; when he feels, he acts; and once in a while there is an unrestraint about him which is frightful; it makes me think of lava breaking through the crust of a volcano. I believe there is something volcanic in his nature; you can't go deep into it without danger. And there is danger now. Father, there is danger now." As Elizabeth repeated her statement she leaned forward a little and looked at her father, her eyes full of earnestness and dread.
"In what way, and to whom?" asked Mr. Royal.
It was not Mr. Royal's way to protest or deny; he liked to get in his evidence first of all. "What makes you think so?" he asked.
"A good many little things that have come back to me in confirmation, but especially a speech of Mr. Edmonson's that I overheard one day at Seascape. Stray shots," he said, "have taken off more superfluous kings and men than the world has any idea of. I did not know at the time whom he had been speaking about, and I forgot the speech; it seemed to me to have no object. But now it does, and now I remember a word or two besides that showed me that he had turned the conversation upon Mr. Archdale."