This answer brought Godfrey to a better sense of what became himself, if not of what Helmer could claim of him. Using positive violence over himself, he spoke next in a tone calm even to iciness. "Mr. Helmer," he said, "I will gladly address you as a gentleman, if you will show me how it can be the part of a gentleman to go prowling about his neighbor's property after nightfall." "Love acknowledges no law but itself, Mr. Wardour," answered Tom, inspired by the dignity of his honest affection for Letty. "Miss Lovel is not your property. I love her, and she loves me. I would do my best to see her, if Thornwick were the castle of Giant Blunderbore." "Why not walk up to the house, like a man, in the daylight, and say you wanted to see her?" "Should I have been welcome, Mr. Wardour?" said Tom, significantly. "You know very well what my reception would have been; and I know better than throw difficulties in my own path. To do as you say would have been to make it next to impossible to see her." "Well, we must find her now anyhow; and you must marry her off-hand." "Must!" echoed Tom, his eyes flashing, at once with anger at the word and with pleasure at the proposal. "Must?" he repeated, "when there is nothing in the world I desire or care for but to marry her? Tell me what it all means, Mr. Wardour; for, by Heaven! I am utterly in the dark." "It means just this--and I don't know but I am making a fool of myself to tell you--that the girl was seen in your company late last night, and has been neither seen nor heard of since." "My God!" cried Tom, now first laying hold of the fact; and with the word he turned and started for the stable. His run, however, broke down, and with a look of scared bewilderment he came back to Godfrey. "Mr. Wardour," he said, "what am I to do? Please advise me. If we raise a hue and cry, it will set people saying all manner of things, pleasant neither for you nor for us." "That is your business, Mr. Helmer," answered Godfrey, bitterly. "It is you who have brought this shame on her." "You are a cold-hearted man," said Tom. "But there is no shame in the matter. I will soon make that clear--if only I knew where to go after her. The thing is to me utterly mysterious: there are neither robbers nor wild beasts about Thornwick. What _can_ have happened to her?" He turned his back on Godfrey for a moment, then, suddenly wheeling, broke out: "I will tell you what it is; I see it all now; she found out that she had been seen, and was too terrified to go into the house again!--Mr. Wardour," he continued, with a new look in his eyes, "I have more reason to be suspicious of you and your mother than you have to suspect me. Your treatment of Letty has not been of the kindest."