THE note Alfred Hardie received, on the 10th of April, was from Peggy Black. The letters were well formed, for she had been educated at the national school: but the style was not upon a par.

“MR. ALFRED, SIR — Margaret Black sends her respects, and if you want to know the truth about the money, I can tell you all, and where it is at this present time. Sir, I am now in situation at Silverton Grove House, about a furlong from the station; and if you will be so good to call there and ask for Margaret, I will tell you where it is, which I mean the L. 14,000; for it is a sin the young lady should be beguiled of her own. Only you must please come this evening, or else tomorrow before ten o’clock, by reason my mistress and me we are going up to London that day early, and she talk of taking me abroad along with her. — I remain, Sir, yours respectfully to command,

MARGARET BLACK.

“If you please, sir, not to show this letter on no account.”

Alfred read this twice over, and felt a contemptuous repugnance towards the writer, a cashiered servant, who offered to tell the truth out of spite, having easily resisted every worthy motive. Indeed, I think he would have perhaps dismissed the subject into the fire, but for a strange circumstance that had occurred to him this very afternoon; but I had no opportunity to relate it till now. Well, just as he was going to dress for dinner, he received a visit from Dr. Wycherley, a gentleman he scarcely knew by name. Dr. Wycherley inquired after his kephalalgia: Alfred stared and told him it was much the same; troubled him occasionally.

“And your insomnia.”

“I don’t know the word: have you any authority for it?”

Dr. Wycherley smiled with a sort of benevolent superiority that galled his patient, and proceeded to inquire after his nightly visions and voices. But at this Alfred looked grave as well as surprised and vexed. He was on his guard now, and asked himself seriously what was the meaning of all this, and could his father have been so mad as to talk over his own shame with this stranger: he made no reply whatever.

Dr. Wycherley’s curiosity was not of a very ardent kind: for he was one of those who first form an opinion, and then collect the materials of one: and a very little fact goes a long way with such minds. So, when he got no answer about the nocturnal visions and voices, he glided calmly on to another matter. “By-the-bye, that L. 14,000!”

Alfred started, and then eyed him keenly: “What L. 14,000?”

“The fabulous sum you labour under the impression of your father having been guilty of clandestinely appropriating.”

This was too much for Alfred’s patience. “I don’t know who you are, sir,” said he; “I never exchanged but three words in my life with you; and do you suppose I will talk to a stranger on family matters of so delicate a kind as this? I begin to think you have intruded yourself on me simply to gratify an impertinent curiosity.”

“The hypothesis is at variance with my established character,” replied the oleaginous one. “Do me the justice to believe in the necessity of this investigation, and that it is one of a most friendly character.”

“Then I decline the double nuisance: your curiosity and your friendship! Take them both out of my room, sir, or I shall turn them both out by one pair of shoulders.”

“You shall smart for this,” said the doctor, driven to plain English by anger, that great solvent of circumlocution with which Nature has mercifully supplied us. He made to the door, opened it, and said in considerable excitement to some one outside, “Excited! — Very!”

Now Dr. Pleonast had no sooner been converted to the vernacular, and disappeared, than another stranger entered the room. He had evidently been lurking in the passage: it was a man of smallish stature, singularly gaunt, angular, and haggard, but dressed in a spruce suit of black, tight, new, and glossy. In short, he looked like Romeo’s apothecary gone to Stultz with the money. He fluttered in with pale cheek and apprehensive body, saying hurriedly, “Now, my dear sir, be calm: pray be calm. I have come down all the way from London to see you, and I am sure you won’t make me lose my journey; will you now?”

“And pray who asked you to come all the way from London, sir?”

“A person to whom your health is very dear.”

“Oh indeed; so I have secret friends, have I? Well, you may tell my secret, underhand, friends, I never was better in my life.”

“I am truly glad to hear it,” said the little man: “let me introduce myself, as Dr. Wycherley forgot to do it.” And he handed Alfred a card, on which his name and profession were written.

“Well, Mr. Speers,” said Alfred, “I have only a moment to give you, for I must dress for dinner. What do you want?”

“I come, sir, in hopes of convincing your friends you are not so very ill; not incurable. Why your eye is steady, your complexion good: a little high with the excitement of this conversation; but, if we can only get over this little delusion, all will be well.”

“What little delusion?”

“About the L. 14,000, you know.”

“What L. 14,000? I have not mentioned L. 14,000 to you, have I?”

“No, sir: you seem to shun it like poison; that is the worst of it. You talk about it to others fast enough: but to Dr. Wycherley and myself, who could cure you of it, you would hide all about it, if you could.”

At this Alfred rose and put his hands in his pockets and looked down grimly on his inquisitor. “Mr. Speers,” said he, “you had better go. There is no credit to be gained by throwing so small an apothecary as you out of that window; and you won’t find it pleasant either; for, if you provoke me to it, I shall not stand upon ceremony: I shan’t open the window first, as I should for Dr. What’s his confounded name.”

At these suggestive words, spoken with suppressed ire and flashing eyes, Speers scuttled to the door crabwise, holding the young lion in check conventionally — to wit, with an eye as valiant as a sheep’s; and a joyful apothecary was he when he found himself safe outside the house and beside Dr. Wycherley, who was waiting for him.

Alfred soon cooled, and began to laugh at his own anger and the unbounded impudence of his visitors: but, on the other hand, it struck him as a grave circumstance that so able a man as his father should stir muddy water; should go and talk to these strangers about the money he had misappropriated. He puzzled himself all the time he was dressing: and, not to trouble the reader with all the conjectures that passed through his mind, he concluded at last, that Mr. Hardie must feel very strong, very sure there was no evidence against him but his son’s, or he would not take the eighth commandment by the horns like this.

“Injustice carries it with a high hand,” thought Alfred, with a sigh. He was not the youth to imitate his father’s shamelessness: so he locked this last incident in his own breast; did not even mention it to Julia.

But now, on reading Peggy’s note, his warlike instincts awoke, and, though he despised his correspondent and her motives, he could not let such a chance pass of defeating brazen injustice. It was unfortunate and awkward to have to go to Silverton on his wedding morning; but, after all, there was plenty of time. He packed up his things at once for the wedding tour, and in the morning took them with him in the fly to Silverton: his plan was to come back direct to Albion Villa: so he went to Silverton Grove full dressed, all ready for the wedding.

As it happened he overtook his friend Peterson just outside the town, called to him gaily, and invited him to church and breakfast.

To his surprise the young gentleman replied sullenly that he should certainly not come.

“Not come, old fellow?” said Alfred, hurt.

“You have a good cheek to ask me,” retorted the other.

This led to an explanation. Peterson’s complaint was that he had told Alfred he was in love with Julia, and Alfred had gone directly and fallen in love with her just to cut him out.

“What are you talking about?” said Alfred. “So this is the reason you have kept away from me of late: why, I was engaged to her at the very time; only my father was keeping us apart.”

“Then why didn’t you say so?”

“Because my love is not of the prattling sort.”

“Oh, nonsense; I don’t believe a word of it.”

“You don’t believe my word! Did you ever know me tell a lie? At that rate think what you please, sir: drive on, Strabo.”

And so ended that little friendship.

On the road our ardent youth arranged in his head a noble scheme. He would bring Peggy Black home with him, compensating her liberally for the place she would thereby lose: would confront her privately with his father, and convince him it was his interest to restore the Dodds their money with a good grace, take the L. 5000 he had already offered, and countenance the wedding by letting Jane be present at it. It was hard to do all this in the time, but well worth trying for, and not impossible. A two-horse fly is not a slow conveyance, and he offered the man a guinea to drive fast; so that it was not nine o’clock when they reached Silverton Grove House, a place Alfred had never heard of. This, however, I may observe, was no wonder: for it had not borne that name a twelve-month.

It was a large square mansion of red brick, with stone facings and corners, and with balustrades that hid the garret windows. It stood in its own grounds, and the entrance was through handsome iron gates, one of which was wide open to admit people on foot or horseback. The flyman got down and tried to open the other, but could not manage it. “There, don’t waste time,” said Alfred impatiently, “let me out.”

He found a notice under the bell, “Ring and enter.” He rang accordingly, and at the clang the hall-door opened, as if he had pulled a porter along with the bell; and a grey-haired servant out of livery stood on the steps to receive him. Alfred hurried across the plat, which was trimmed as neatly as a college green, and asked the servant if he could see Margaret Black.

“Margaret Black?” said the man doubtfully: “I’ll inquire, sir. Please to follow me.”

They entered a handsome hall, with antlers and armour: from this a double staircase led up to a landing with folding doors in the centre of it; one of these doors was wide open like the iron gate outside. The servant showed Alfred up the left-hand staircase, through the open door, into a spacious drawing-room, handsomely though not gaily furnished and decorated, but a little darkened by Venetian blinds.

The old servant walked gravely on and on, till Alfred began to think he would butt the wall; but he put his hand out and opened a door that might very well escape a stranger’s notice; for it was covered with looking-glass, and matched another narrow mirror in shape and size. This door led into a very long room, as plain and even sordid as the drawing-room was inviting: the unpapered walls were a cold drab, and wanted washing; there was a thick cobweb up in one corner, and from the ceiling hung the tail of another, which the housemaid’s broom had scotched not killed: that side of the room they entered by was all books. The servant said, “Stay here a moment, sir, and I’ll send her to you.” With this he retired into the drawing-room, closing the door softly after him: once closed it became invisible; it fitted like wax, and left nothing to be seen but books; not even a knob. It shut to with that gentle but clean click which a spring bolt, however polished and oiled and gently closed, will emit. Altogether it was enough to give some people a turn. But Alfred’s nerves were not to be affected by trifles; he put his hands in his pockets and walked up and down the room, quietly enough at first, but by-and-bye uneasily. “Confound her for wasting my time,” thought he; “why doesn’t she come?

Then, as he had learned to pick up the fragments of time, and hated dawdling, he went to take a book from the shelves.

He found it was a piece of iron, admirably painted: it chilled his hand with its unexpected coldness: and all the books on and about the door were iron and chilly.

“Well,” thought he, “this is the first dummy ever took me in. What a fool the man must be! Why he could have bought books with ideas in them for the price of these impostors.”

Still Peggy did not come. So he went to a door opposite, and at right angles to the farthest window, meaning to open it and inquire after her: lo and behold he found this was a knob without a door. There had been a door but it was blocked up. The only available door on that side had a keyhole, but no latch, nor handle.

Alfred was a prisoner.

He no sooner found this out than he began to hammer on the door with his fists, and call out.

This had a good effect, for he heard a woman’s dress come rustling: a key was inserted, and the door opened. But, instead of Peggy, it was a tall well-formed woman of thirty, with dark grey eyes, and straightish eyebrows massive and black as jet. She was dressed quietly but like a lady. Mrs. Archbold, for that was her name, cast on Alfred one of those swift, all-devouring glances, with which her sex contrive to take in the features, character, and dress of a person from head to foot, and smiled most graciously on him, revealing a fine white set of teeth. She begged him to take a seat; and sat down herself. She had left the door ajar.

“I came to see Margaret Black,” said Alfred.

“Margaret Black? There is no such person here,” was the quiet reply.

“What! has she gone away so early as this?”

Mrs. Archbold smiled, and said soothingly, “Are you sure she ever existed; except in your imagination?”

Alfred laughed at this, and showed her Peggy’s letter. She ran her eye over it, and returned it him with a smile of a different kind, half pitying, half cynical. But presently resuming her former manner, “I remember now,” said she in dulcet tones: “the anxiety you are labouring under is about a large sum of money, is it not?”

“What, can you give me any information about it?” said he, surprised.

“I think we can render you great service in the matter, infinite service, Mr. Hardie,” was the reply, in a voice of very honey.

Alfred was amazed at this. “You say you don’t know Peggy! And yet you seem to know me. I never saw you in my life before, madam; what on earth is the meaning of all this?”

“Calm yourself,” said Mrs. Archbold, laying a white and finely moulded hand upon his arm, “there is no wonder nor mystery in the matter: you were expected.”

The colour rushed into Alfred’s face, and he started to his feet; some vague instinct told him to be gone from this place.

The lady fixed her eyes on him, put her hand to a gold chain that was round her neck, and drew out of her white bosom, not a locket, nor a key, but an ivory whistle. Keeping her eye steadily fixed on Alfred, she breathed softly into the whistle. Then two men stepped quietly in at the door; one was a short, stout snob, with great red whiskers, the other a wiry gentleman with iron-grey hair. The latter spoke to Alfred, and began to coax him. If Mrs. Archbold was honey, this personage was treacle. “Be calm, my dear young gentleman; don’t agitate yourself. You have been sent here for your good; and that y............