It subsided. How could Alice Arden have possessed such an influence over this man, who seemed to hate her? He sat down, and placed his hand to his broad, pale forehead, his dark eyes glaring on the floor, in what seemed an intensity of thought and passion. He was seized with a violent trembling fit. It lasted only for a few minutes. I sometimes think he loved that girl desperately, and would have made her an idolatrous husband. He walked twice or thrice up and down the great parlour in which they sat, and then with cold malignity said to Sir Richard-- "But for you she would have married me; but for you I should have secured her now. _Consider_, how shall I settle with you?" "Settle how you will--do what you will. I swear (and he did swear hard enough, if an oath could do it, to satisfy any man) I've had _nothing_ to do with it. I've never had a hint that she meditated leaving this place. I can't conceive how it was done, nor who managed it, and I know no more than you do where she is gone." And he clenched his vehement disclaimer with an imprecation. Longcluse was silent for a minute. "She has gone, I assume, to David Arden's house," he said, looking down. "There is no other house to receive her in town, and she does not know that he is away still. She knows that Lady May, and other friends, have gone. She's _there_. The will makes you, colourably, her guardian. You shall claim the custody of her person. We'll go there, and remove her." Old Sir Reginald's will, I may remark, had been made years before, when Richard was not twenty-two, and Alice little more than a child, and the baronet and his son good friends. He stalked out. At the steps was his trap, which was there to take Levi into town. That gentleman, I need not say, he did not treat with much ceremony. He mounted, and Sir Richard Arden beside him; and, leaving the Jew to shift for himself, he drove at a furious pace down the avenue. The porter placed there by Longcluse, of course, opened the gate instantaneously at his call. Outside stood a cab, with a trunk on it. An old woman at the lodge-window, knocking and clamouring, sought admission. "Let no one in," said Longcluse sternly to the man, who locked the iron gate on their passing out. "Hallo! What brings _her_ here? That's the old housekeeper!" said Longcluse, pulling up suddenly. It was quite true. Her growing uneasiness about Alice had recalled the old woman from the North. Martha Tansey, who had heard the clang of the gate and the sound of wheels and hoofs, turned about and came to the side of the tax-cart, over which Longcluse was leaning. In the brilliant moonlight, on the white road, the branches cast a network of black shadow. A patch of light fell clear on the side of the trap, and on Longcluse's ungloved hand as he leaned on it. "Here am I, Martha Tansey, has lived fifty year wi' the family, and what for am I shut out of Mortlake now?" she demanded, with stern audacity.