"I should think not." Then there was a pause, at the end of which Jones found himself driven to ask a question: "How has he lied?" Augustus smiled and shook his head, from which the other man gathered that he was not now to be told the nature of the lie in question. "A fellow that lies like that," said Jones, "is not to be endured."
"I do not mean to endure him. You have heard of a young lady named Miss Mountjoy, a cousin of ours?"
"Mountjoy's Miss Mountjoy?" suggested Jones.
"Yes, Mountjoy's Miss Mountjoy. That, of course, is over. Mountjoy has brought himself to such a pass that he is not entitled to have a Miss Mountjoy any longer. It seems the proper thing that she shall pass, with the rest of the family property, to the true heir."
"We need not talk about that just at present. I don't know that I've made up my mind. At any rate, I do not intend that Harry Annesley shall have her."
"He's a pestilential cur, that has got himself introduced into the family, and the sooner we get quit of him the better. I should think the young lady would hardly fancy him when she knows that he has lied like the very devil, with the object of getting her former lover out of the way."
"And when the world comes to understand that Harry Annesley, in the midst of all these inquiries, knows all about poor Mountjoy,--was the last to see him in London,--and has never come forward to say a word about him, then I think the world will be a little hard upon the immaculate Harry Annesley. His own uncle has quarrelled with him already."
"The gentleman down in Hertfordshire, on the strength of whose acres Master Harry is flaunting it about in idleness. I have my eyes open and can see as well as another. When Harry lectures me about my father and my father about me, one would suppose that there's not a hole in his own coat. I think he'll find that the garment is not altogether water-tight." Then Augustus, finding that he had told as much as was needful to Septimus Jones, left his friend and went about his own family business.
On the next morning Septimus Jones took his departure, and on the day following Augustus followed him. "So you're off?" his father said to him when he came to make his adieux.
"Well, yes; I suppose so. A man has got so many things to look after which he can't attend to down here."