“It isn’t much I have to tell, sir,” answered the housekeeper, very gravely. “You remember old Mr. Restwick, of Pen Gorbold. Folks say that he’s almost as rich as our master was. However it is, he and master were always fast friends; and when Mrs. Restwick had been dead a little over a twelvemonth, he and master seemed to get friendlier than ever, and was always laying their heads together about something, old Restwick hanging about this place, and sitting in our kitchen, and in this very room--for master made quite a fuss with the old man, and would sit in the parlour on his account--all the summer time. Miss Susan usen’t to like the old man, but she daredn’t say as much, seeing as he was her father’s friend. Heaven, as looks down upon me, knows, Mr. Francis, than the real reason of old Restwick pottering about our place night after night never came into my head, no more than if it had been so much Greek or Latin. But one night--one quiet summer evening, after such a day as to-day--the truth came out all at once; and it came upon Susan Tredethlyn as it came upon me--like a thunderbolt. Can you guess what it was, Mr. Francis?” “No!” exclaimed the young man, staring at Martha Dryscoll with a bewildered expression on his face. “Nor any one else, Mr. Francis, that wasn’t so wrapped up in the love of his money that the very heart inside of him had turned to stuff as hard as big golden guineas, or harder; for there’s some kind of furnace as will melt _them_, isn’t there, Mr. Francis? On the night I am telling you of, my master told Susan the meaning of old Restwick’s visits. She was to marry him--poor, pretty young thing. He’d promise to make such and such--settlements--I think master called ’em, and she’d be mistress of Pen Gorbold farm, and one of the richest women in this part of the country. The poor dear only gave one shriek, Mr. Francis, and fell down upon the floor at her father’s feet as white and as quiet as a corpse.” “The hard-hearted villain!” cried Francis, pacing up and down the room; “the infernal villain!”