Or would you prefer to go direct to the Home Secretary?
Sir Thomas Vandeleur, indeed!
Perhaps you think I don't know a gentleman when I see one, from a common run-thehedge like you?
Clothes or no clothes, I can read you like a book.
Here is a shirt that maybe cost as much as my Sunday hat; and that coat, I take it, has never seen the inside of Rag-fair, and then your boots - "
The man, whose eyes had fallen upon the ground, stopped short in his insulting commentary, and remained for a moment looking intently upon something at his feet.
When he spoke his voice was strangely altered.
"What, in God's name," said he, "is all this?"
Harry, following the direction of the man's eyes, beheld a spectacle that struck him dumb with terror and amazement.
In his fall he had descended vertically upon the bandbox and burst it open from end to end; thence a great treasure of diamonds had poured forth, and now lay abroad, part trodden in the soil, part scattered on the surface in regal and glittering profusion.
There was a magnificent coronet which he had often admired on Lady Vandeleur; there were rings and brooches, ear-drops and bracelets, and even unset brilliants rolling here and there among the rosebushes like drops of morning dew.
A princely fortune lay between the two men upon the ground - a fortune in the most inviting, solid, and durable form, capable of being carried in an apron, beautiful in itself, and scattering the sunlight in a million rainbow flashes.
"Good God!" said Harry,
"I am lost!"
His mind raced backwards into the past with the incalculable velocity of thought, and he began to comprehend his day's adventures, to conceive them as a whole, and to recognise the sad imbroglio in which his own character and fortunes had become involved.
He looked round him as if for help, but he was alone in the garden, with his scattered diamonds and his redoubtable interlocutor; and when he gave ear, there was no sound but the rustle of the leaves and the hurried pulsation of his heart.
It was little wonder if the young man felt himself deserted by his spirits, and with a broken voice repeated his last ejaculation -
"I am lost!"
The gardener peered in all directions with an air of guilt; but there was no face at any of the windows, and he seemed to breathe again.
"Pick up a heart," he said, "you fool!
The worst of it is done.
Why could you not say at first there was enough for two?
Two?" he repeated, "aye, and for two hundred!
But come away from here, where we may be observed; and, for the love of wisdom, straighten out your hat and brush your clothes.
You could not travel two steps the figure of fun you look just now."
While Harry mechanically adopted these suggestions, the gardener, getting upon his knees, hastily drew together the scattered jewels and returned them to the bandbox.
The touch of these costly crystals sent a shiver of emotion through the man's stalwart frame; his face was transfigured, and his eyes shone with concupiscence; indeed it seemed as if he luxuriously prolonged his occupation, and dallied with every diamond that he handled.
At last, however, it was done; and, concealing the bandbox in his smock, the gardener beckoned to Harry and preceded him in the direction of the house.
Near the door they were met by a young man evidently in holy orders, dark and strikingly handsome, with a look of mingled weakness and resolution, and very neatly attired after the manner of his caste.
The gardener was plainly annoyed by this encounter; but he put as good a face upon it as he could, and accosted the clergyman with an obsequious and smiling air.
"Here is a fine afternoon, Mr. Rolles," said he: "a fine afternoon, as sure as God made it!
And here is a young friend of mine who had a fancy to look at my roses.
I took the liberty to bring him in, for I thought none of the lodgers would object."
"Speaking for myself," replied the Reverend Mr. Rolles,
"I do not; nor do I fancy any of the rest of us would be more difficult upon so small a matter.
The garden is your own, Mr. Raeburn; we must none of us forget that; and because you give us liberty to walk there we should be indeed ungracious if we so far presumed upon your politeness as to interfere with the convenience of your friends.
But, on second thoughts," he added, "I believe that this gentleman and I have met before.
Mr. Hartley, I think.
I regret to observe that you have had a fall."
And he offered his hand.
A sort of maiden dignity and a desire to delay as long as possible the necessity for explanation moved Harry to refuse this chance of help, and to deny his own identity.
He chose the tender mercies of the gardener, who was at least unknown to him, rather than the curiosity and perhaps the doubts of an acquaintance.
"I fear there is some mistake," said he.
"My name is Thomlinson and I am a friend of Mr. Raeburn's."
"Indeed?" said Mr. Rolles.
"The likeness is amazing."
Mr. Raeburn, who had been upon thorns throughout this colloquy, now felt it high time to bring it to a period.
"I wish you a pleasant saunter, sir," said he.
And with that he dragged Harry after him into the house, and then into a chamber on the garden.
His first care was to draw down the blind, for Mr. Rolles still remained where they had left him, in an attitude of perplexity and thought.