rheard at Maidstone. "Oho!" he crowed. "What cause have ye to
think that?"

"Cause? Why, what I have seen. Besides, I feel it in my bones. My every
instinct tells me 'tis so."

"If you should prove right! Oh, if you should prove right! Death! I'd
find a way to settle the score of that pert fellow from France, and to
dictate terms to his lordship at the same time."

Her ladyship stared at him. "Ye're an unnatural hound, Rotherby. Would
ye betray your own father?"

"Betray him? No! But I'll set a term to his plotting. Egad! Has he not
lost enough in the South Sea Bubble, without sinking the little that is
left in some wild-goose Jacobite plot?"

"How shall it matter to you, since he's sworn to disinherit you?"

"How, madam?" Rotherby laughed cunningly. "I'll prevent the one and the
other--and pay off Mr. Caryll at the same time. Three birds with one
stone, let me perish!" He reached for his hat. "I must find this fellow
Green."

"What will you do?" she asked, a slight anxiety trembling in her voice.

"Stir up his suspicions of Caryll. He'll be ready enough to act after
his discomfiture at Maidstone. I'll warrant he's smarting under it.
If once we can find cause to lay Caryll by the heels, the fear of the
consequences should bring his lordship to his senses. 'Twill be my turn
then."

"But you'll do nothing that--that will hurt your father?" she enjoined
him, her hand upon his shoulder.

"Trust me," he laughed, and added cynically: "It would hardly sort with
my interests to involve him. It will serve me best to frighten him into
reason and a sense of his paternal duty."

CHAPTER IX. THE CHAMPION

Mr. Caryll was well and handsomely housed, as became the man of fashion,
in the lodging he had taken in Old Palace Yard. Knowing him from abroad,
it was not impossible that the government--fearful of sedition since
the disturbance caused by the South Sea distress, and aware of an
undercurrent of Jacobitism--might for a time, at least, keep an eye upon
him. It behooved him, therefore, to appear neither more nor less than
a lounger, a gentleman of pleasure who had come to London in quest of
diversion. To support this appearance, Mr. Caryll had sought out some
friends of his in town. There were Stapleton and Collis, who had been
at Oxford with him, and with whom he had ever since maintained a
correspondence and a friendship. He sought them out on the very evening
of his arrival--after his interview with Lord Ost