“Use all your powers of persuasion. Tell him that I want to cut a new road, to find employment for the men; and if the station be at Chillacot, the road must go there. If your father—” “Eight,” whispered Jingles as an aside, and looked at Arminell. “If your father is reasonable, we will begin at once. You see how we are situated. I can understand his reluctance to quit a house where he was born, and for which he has done so much; but then, consider the price offered for it. This offer comes in most fitly now that the mine is abandoned. Your father—” Again the tutor looked at Arminell. “Your father must leave, as there is no work for him of the kind he is accustomed to, and a nice little capital would be very serviceable.” “I will go, my lord, at once,” said Jingles. “Thank you, Saltren, thank you. I have to be off to catch the 11.28 train.” He went out of the room through the window by which he had entered. “Did you hear?” asked the tutor, partly in scorn, partly in pain. “Nine times at the least did he speak of the manganese captain as my father, although he knew perfectly all the while that I am not his son. Did you notice the pointed way in which he spoke? It was as though he suspected that I had got wind of the truth, and would emphatically let me understand that he would never, never acknowledge it, emphatically bid me consider the mining captain as my father. But”—his face darkened with anger—“I am by no means assured that we know the whole truth.” Arminell shuddered. Jingles looked intently at her, and saw that she divined his thoughts. “No,” said he calmly: “never fear that I will have the story published to the world. It would bring disgrace on too many persons. It would make my mother’s position now as the wife of Captain Saltren an equivocal one. To disclose the truth, whatever complexion the truth might be found to wear when examined, would cause incalculable misery. What I shall do, whither I shall turn, I cannot yet tell.” Arminell also had noticed the manner in which Lord Lamerton had spoken of the captain to the tutor as his father, and she also, with her preconceptions, thought it was pointedly so done. “No,” said Jingles. “I shall have to leave this house, and I shall let his lordship know that I am not as blind as he would wish me to be. But what I shall do is as yet undetermined. I shall ask you to help me to come to a decision.” CHAPTER XX. HE BECOMES SOMEBODY. Arminell kept to herself that day. At lunch she had not much to say to her step-mother, and Lord Lamerton was out. Giles came down, and his mother talked to him and to the tutor, and seemed not to observe Arminell’s silence.