"Anastasia! You are ridiculous. What have we done that all the world would not do if it could? These scruples are absurd, and these visions are fantastic. What is your share? You know that half of mine--all that is mine--is yours as well. You shall have my hand and my name. These you should have had long ago had they been worth your picking up. Alas! Anastasia, no one knows better than you the desperate condition of my affairs."
"Well, I will obey you. I will go back to town. I will go to-morrow. The other partners in our innocency--they will also go back, I suppose."
"They will have done their part--Sir Harry and the colonel and the parson--they will all go back. They cost a great deal to keep, and they have done their work."
"Perhaps not. Write to her from London. Invite her to stay with you. For my own part, I will look about me for the man we want. A prisoner--on the poor side--a gentleman; one who will do anything for a guinea a week. The girl will not know that he is a prisoner--it will be quite easy----"
This he said, concealing his real intentions, and only anxious to get this lady out of the way. But he left her suspicious and jealous. That is to say, she had already become both, and this intricate plot of getting a husband from the fleet, and the rest of it, made her still more suspicious and jealous.
At the "Crown" Lord Fylingdale found Colonel Lanyon waiting for him.
"I have inquired, my lord, after Tom Rising. He is in a fever this morning."
"Perhaps. But he is young. They think that he will recover. What are your lordship's commands?"
"We have stayed here long enough, colonel."
"With submission, my lord. Although business has been very bad, it would be as well to wait for the event in Tom Rising's case. My position is very secure if he recovers. The gentlemen of the company have acknowledged that he forced high play upon me; they are unanimous in that respect. It means over a thousand pounds. If he recovers he must pay the money."
"Yes. In that case it may be best to wait. If he dies----"
"Then, my lord, we know not what his heirs and executors may resolve upon. The feeling concerning debts of honour is, however, very strong among the gentlemen of Norfolk. I am sorry that they are not richer."
