Too uneasy to waste much time in dressing, before many minutes had flown, Mr. and Mrs. Ashton, whose fears had equally pointed to their daughter—the one in a roquelaire, and the other in her warehouse overall—were both listening with agitated and anxious faces to Mr. Clegg’s communication, made with a discomposure great as their own. “Elope!” both parents exclaimed, simultaneously. “Elope!” reiterated the mother! “our daughter consent to elope, and with a reprobate like him? It is not possible!” “So I should have said, madam, yesterday,” rejoined Jabez, sadly, as he sank on a chair, overpowered more by the strain on his feelings than by the fatigue of his long, wet, midnight ride; “and I would have given the _world_ to have been able to doubt the evidence of my own ears.” Mrs. Ashton, with clasped hands up, sat opposite to Jabez; Mr. Ashton, lacking the consolation and inspiration of his snuff-box, walked about the room with one hand to his head in a state of distressing perturbation. He stopped in his walk to ask, “What’s to be done?” as Jabez made this declaration, unconscious of its force. The light of the chamber candle fell upon the haggard face and drenched garments of the young man. The elder one looked full at him, paused, then drawing near and laying his right hand heavily on the other’s wet shoulder, asked in a troubled voice, with an inquisitorial but not unkind manner— “My lad, did no other motive than duty to your employers bring you eighteen miles through the rain this dark night to save Miss Ashton from an imprudent marriage?” Jabez had not stopped to analyse his own motives. Thus questioned, it was not without embarrassment that he answered, “Mrs. Ashton desired me, sir, to watch over Miss Ashton, and acquaint you with any matter affecting her welfare. But apart from that, sir, I could not see Miss Ashton in the toils of a libertine without an attempt to rescue her. I should have been a dastard to sit passive; and even now I feel we are losing time.” “Just so, just so,” assented Mr. Ashton. “That reminds me, Peveril is in the street, and you are soaked to the skin. My dear”—turning to his wife—“will you arouse the servants, and see that neither horse nor rider suffers in our service more than we can help.” Having thus got rid of his wife, of whom he stood somewhat in awe, he resumed his searching catechism of Jabez. “And so, Clegg, you have no motive beyond a chivalrous desire to save your master’s daughter, no _interest_ to serve beyond your duty to us?” The ordeal was terrible. Jabez rose, his features working convulsively. “Mr. Ashton, you are torturing me. Humble as I am, I love Miss Ashton with my whole life and soul. But knowing the distance between us, I have striven to keep the secret in my own breast. And I protest I had no double motive in my journey hither.”