Chayter’s quick eye detected, as soon as she was alone with Mr. Grahame, a little pile of sovereigns, some eight or ten, upon the table. Mr. Grahame pointed to them.
“They shall be yours,” he said, “if you afford me any satisfactory information respecting the disappearance of Miss Grahame.”
“I can only tell you what I know sir,” replied the girl, regarding the sovereigns with a wishful eye.
“And what you may have reason to assume,” he added.
He then put a variety of questions to her, some of which she answered truthfully, and others by mere invention. It was not much that he ascertained, yet enough to know that Helen was in the habit of meeting some person at night in the garden; that whoever he was, he frequently addressed letters to her, and was no doubt the person who, being discovered suddenly by the Honorable Lester Vane, had felled that gentleman to the earth.
Mr. Grahame racked his brain to no purpose to fix upon some one likely to be the man who had so singularly beguiled his daughter from her high place, and at length he handed the money to Chayter, and bade her, if she could obtain any further information upon the strange subject, to communicate it to him, and she should be liberally rewarded.
“I’ll find her out,” said Chayter, when she left. “It will be worth my while. She’ll be clever if she keeps herself hidden from me!”
Chayter was premature in her conclusions.
Mr. Grahame sat alone to reflect upon his situation. A cloud had once more risen upon his fair sky, and threatened a storm. The flight, and possible _mésalliance_ of his daughter Helen would certainly become known, and prove humbling to the pride of his house. The arrangements between himself and Wilton had yet to be completed. He had received large sums of money, for which he had given acknowledgments, and should anything arise to destroy the present understanding, his position would be frightful. Utter ruin and beggary must at one blow ensue.
But there was no reason to presume that the proposition made by Nathan Gomer, and acceded to by Wilton, would not be completed: there was a possibility of his son Malcolm marrying Flora Wilton. Still there was the possible contingency of something arising to prevent either being accomplished. Ah! if old Wilton had but perished in the fire which had consumed his house, or had died in prison, the whole of the wealth in dispute would have come to him, Grahame.