‘I cannot believe this. I cannot believe that she would desert the man who befriended her, and forsake her child.’ ‘You say that because you did not know her. You know Martin; would he not do it? You know Watt; has he any scruples and strong domestic affections? She was like them; had in her veins the same boiling, giddy, wanton blood.’ Jasper knew but too well that Martin and Watt were unscrupulous, and followed pleasure regardless of the calls of duty. He had been too young when his sister left home to know anything of her character. It was possible that she had the same light and careless temperament as Martin. ‘A horse that shies once will shy again,’ said the old man. ‘Eve ran away from home once, and she ran away from the second home. If she did not run away from home a third time it probably was that she had none to desert.’ ‘And Mr. Jordan knows nothing of her?’ ‘He lives too far from the stream of life to see the broken dead things that drift down it.’ Jasper considered. The flush of anger had faded from his brow; an expression of great sadness had succeeded. His hand was over his brow, but he was no longer intent on his father’s face; his eyes rested on the table. ‘I must find out something about my sister. It is too horrible to think of our sister, our only sister, as a lost, sunk, degraded thing.’ He thought of Mr. Jordan, of his strange manner, his abstracted look, his capricious temper. He did not believe that the master of Morwell was in his sound senses. He seemed to be a man whose mind had preyed on some great sorrow till all nerve had gone out of it. What was that sorrow? Once Barbara had said to him, in excuse for some violence and rudeness in her father’s conduct, that he had never got over the loss of Eve’s mother. ‘Mr. Jordan was not easy about his treatment of my daughter,’ said old Babb. ‘From what little I saw of him seventeen years ago I take him to be a weak-spirited man. He was in a sad take-on then at the loss of Eve, and having a baby thrown on his hands unweaned. He offered me the money I wanted to buy those fields for stretching the cloth. You may be sure when a man presses money on you, and is indifferent to interest, that he wants you to forgive him something. He desired me to look over his conduct to my daughter, and drop all inquiries. I dare say they had had words, and then she was ready in her passion to run away with the first vagabond who offered.’ Then Jasper removed his hand from his face, and laid one on the other upon the table. His face was now pale, and the muscles set. His eyes looked steadily and sternly at the mean old man, who averted his eyes from those of his son. ‘What is this? You took a bribe, father, to let the affair remain unsifted! For the sake of a few acres of meadow you sacrificed your child!’