'
'No, he died in the nick of time, and the inquiry was squashed, thanks
to the Angersthorpe interest, and my grandmother's cleverness. But if he
had lived a few weeks longer England would have rung with the story of
his profligacy and dishonour. Some people say he committed suicide in
order to escape the inquiry; but I have heard my mother emphatically
deny this. My father told her that he had often talked with the people
who kept the little inn where his father died, and they were clear
enough in their assertion that the death was a natural death--the sudden
collapse of an exhausted constitution.'
'Was it on account of this scandal that your father spent the best part
of his life away from England?' Hammond asked, feeling that it was a
relief to Maulevrier to talk about this secret burden of his.
The young Earl was light-hearted and frivolous by nature, yet even he
had his graver moments; and upon this subject of the old Maulevrier
scandal he was peculiarly sensitive, perhaps all the more so because his
grandmother had never allowed him to speak to her about it, had never
satisfied his curiosity upon any details of that painful story.
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