The price offered for
the work was a very respectable one, and yet--he had some internal
misgivings, somehow, about this mysterious commission. Could it be
to get rid of him? He had an uncomfortable suspicion in the back
chambers of his mind, that whoever had commissioned the pictures
might be more anxious to send him well away from Tilgate than
to possess a series of picturesque sketches on the Meuse and its
tributaries.
And who could have an interest in keeping him far from Tilgate?
That was the question. Was there anybody whom his presence there
could in any way incommode? Could it be Elma's father who wanted
to send him so quickly away from England?
And what was the meaning of Elma's profound resolution, so strangely
and strongly expressed, never, never to marry him?
A painful idea flitted across the young man's puzzled brain. Had
the Cliffords alone discovered the secret of his birth? and was
that secret of such a disgraceful sort that Elma's father shrank
from owning him as a prospective son-in-law, while even Elma herself
could not bring herself to accept him as her future husband? If so,
what could that ghastly secret be? Were he and Guy the inheritors
of some deadly crime? Had their origin been concealed from them,
more in mercy than in cruelty, only lest some hideous taint of
murder or of madness might mar their future and make their whole
lives miserable?
When he reached Staple Inn, he found Guy and Montague Nevitt already
in their joint rooms, and arrears of three days' correspondence
awaiting him.
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