y?"

"My poor mistress! my poor mistress!" sobbed Mrs. Jones.

"You cannot do more injury than you at present have done. No one is
now afraid of you; no one here will ever give you another shilling.
When and in what form you will be prosecuted for inducing Sir Thomas
to give you money, I cannot yet tell. Now, you may go; and I strongly
advise you never to show your face here again. If the people about
here knew who you are, and what you are, they would not let you off
the property with a whole bone in your skin. Now go, sir. Do you hear
me?"

"Upon my word, Mr. Prendergast, I have not intended any harm!"

"Go, sir!"

"And even now, Mr. Prendergast, it can all be made straight, and I
will leave the country altogether, if you wish it--"

"Go, sir!" shouted Mr. Prendergast. "If you do not move at once, I
will ring the bell for the servants!"

"Then, if misfortune comes upon them, it is your doing, and not
mine," said Mollett.

"Oh, Mr. Pendrergrass, if it can be hushed up--" said Mrs. Jones,
rising from her chair and coming up to him with her hands clasped
together. "Don't send him away in your anger; don't'ee now, sir.
Think of her ladyship. Do, do, do;" and the woman took hold of his
arm, and looked up into his face with her eyes swimming with tears.
Then going to the door she closed it, and returning again, touched
his arm, and again appealed to him. "Think of Mr. Herbert, sir, and
the young ladies! What are they to be called, sir, if this man is to
be my lady's husband? Oh, Mr. Pendrergrass, let him go away, out of
the kingdom; do let him go away."

"I'll be off to Australia by the next boat, if you'll only say the
word," said Mollett. To give him his due, he was not at that moment
thinking altogether of himself and of what he might get. The idea of
the misery which he had brought on these people did, to a certain
measure, come home to him. And it certainly did come home to him
also, that his own position was very perilous.

"Mrs. Jones," said the lawyer, seeming to pay no attention whatever
to Mollett's words, "you know nothing of such men as that. If I were
to take him at his word now, he would turn upon Sir Thomas again
before three weeks were over."

"By ----, I would not! By all that is holy, I would not. Mr.
Prendergast, do--."

"Mr. Mollett, I will trouble you to walk out of this house. I have
nothing further to say to you."

"Oh, very well, sir." And then slowly Mollett took his departure,
an