nags in the winter along the roads of Cheltenham in the direction which the hounds took. It was still summer, and the nags, who had been made to do their work in London, were picking up a little strength in idleness, or, as Mr. Baskerville called it, getting into condition. In the mean time Mr. Baskerville amused himself as well as he could by lying in bed and playing lawn-tennis. He sometimes dined at the hotel, in order that the club might think that he was entertained at friends' houses; but the two places were nearly the same to him, as he could achieve a dinner and half a pint of wine for five or six shillings at each of them. A more empty existence, or, one would be inclined to say, less pleasurable, no one could pass; but he had always a decent coat on his back and a smile on his face, and five shillings in his pocket with which to pay for his dinner. His asking what was up about Scarborough showed, at any rate, that he was very backward in the world's news.
"I believe he has vanished," said Harry.
"Oh yes, of course he's vanished. Everybody knows that—he vanished ever so long ago; but where is he?"
"If you can tell them in Scotland Yard they will be obliged to you."
"I suppose it is true the police are after him? Dear me! Forty thousand a year! This is a very queer story about the property, isn't it?"
"I don't know the story exactly, and therefore can hardly say whether it is queer or not."
"But about the younger son? People say that the father has contrived that the younger son shall have the money. What I hear is that the whole property is to be divided, and that the captain is to have half, on conditions that he keeps out of the way. But I am sure that you know more about it. You used to be intimate with both the brothers. I have seen you down here with the captain. Where is he?" And again he whispered into Harry's ear. But he could not have selected any subject more distasteful, and, therefore, Harry repulsed Mr. Baskerville not in the most courteous manner.
"Hang it! what airs that fellow gives himself," he said to another friend of the same kidney. "That's young Annesley, the son of a twopenny-halfpenny parson down in Hertfordshire. The kind of ways these fellows put on now are unbearable. He hasn't got a horse to ride on, but to hear him talk you'd think he was mounted three days a week."
"He's heir to old Prosper, of Buston Hall."
"How's that? But is he? I never heard that before. What's Buston Hall worth?" Then Mr. Baskerville made up his mind to be doubly civil to Harry Annesley the next time he saw him.
Harry had to consider on that night in what manner he would endeavor to see Florence Mountjoy on the next day. He was thoroughly discontented with himself as he walked about the streets of Cheltenham. He had now not only allowed the disappearance of Scarborough to pass by without stating when and where, and how he had last seen him, but had directly lied on the subject. He had told the man's brother that he had not seen him for some weeks previous, whereas to have concealed his knowledge on such a subject was in itself held to be abominable. He was ashamed of himself, and the more so because there was no one to whom he could talk openly on the matter. And it seemed to him as though all whom he met questioned him as to the man's disappearance, as if they suspected him. What was the man to him, or the man's guilt, or his father, that he should be made miserable? The man's attack upon him had been ferocious in its nature—so brutal that when he had escaped from Mountjoy Scarborough's clutches there was nothing for him but to leave him lying in the street where, in his drunkenness, he had fallen. And now, in consequence of this, misery had fallen upon himself. Even this empty-headed fellow Baskerville, a man the poverty of whose character Harry perfectly understood, had questioned him about Mountjoy Scarborough. It could not, he thought, be possible that Baskerville could have had any reasons for suspicion, and yet the very sound of the inquiry stuck in his ears.
On the next morning, at eleven o'clock, he knocked at Mrs. Mountjoy's house in Mountpellier Place and asked for the elder lady. Mrs. Mountjoy was out, and Harry at once inquired for Florence. The servant at first seemed to hesitate, but at last showed Harry into the dining-room. There he waited five minutes, which seemed to him to be half an hour, and then Florence came to him. "Your mother is not at home," he said, putting out his hand.
"No, Mr. Annesley, but I think she will be back soon. Will you wait for her?"
"I do not know whether I am not glad that she should be out. Florence, I have something that I must tell you."
"Something that you must tell me!"
He had called her Florence once before, on a happy afternoon which he well remembered, but he was not thinking of that now. Her name, which was always in his mind, had come to him naturally, as though he had no time to pick and choose about names in the importance of the communication which he had to make. "Yes. I don't believe that you were ever really engaged to your cousin Mountjoy."
"No, I never was," she answered, briskly. Harry Annesley was certainly a handsome man, but no young man living ever thought less of his own beauty. He had fair, wavy hair, which he was always submitting to some barber, very much to the unexpressed disgust of poor Florence; because to her eyes the longer the hair grew the more beautiful was the wearer of it. His forehead, and eyes, and nose were all perfect in their form—
"Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command."
There was a peculiar brightness in his eye, which would have seemed to denote something absolutely great in his character had it not been for the wavering indecision of his mouth. There was as it were a vacillation in his lips which took away from the manliness of his physiognomy. Florence, who regarded his face as almost divine, was yet conscious of some weakness about his mouth which she did not know how to interpret. But yet, without knowing why it was so, she was accustomed to expect from him doubtful words, half expressed words, which would not declare to her his perfected thoughts—as she would have them declared. He was six feet high, but neither broad nor narrow, nor fat nor thin, but a very Apollo in Florence's eye. To the elders who knew him the quintessence of his beauty lay in the fact that he was altogether unconscious of it. He was a man who counted nothing on his personal appearance for the performance of those deeds which he was most anxious to achieve. The one achievement now essentially necessary to his happiness was the possession of Florence Mountjoy; but it certainly never occurred to him that he was more likely to obtain this because he was six feet high, or because his hair waved becomingly.
"I have supposed so," he said, in answer to her last assertion.
"You ought to have known it for certain. I mean to say that, had I ever been engaged to my cousin, I should have been miserable at such a moment as this. I never should have given him up because of the gross injustice done to him about the property. But his disappearance in this dreadful way would, I think, have killed me. As it is, I can think of nothing else, because he is my cousin."
"It is very dreadful," said Harry. "Have you any idea what can have happened to him?"
"Not in the least. Have you?"
"None at all, but—"
"But what?"
"I was the last person who saw him."
"You saw him last!"
"At least, I know no one who saw him after me."
"Have you told them?"
"I have told no one but you. I have come down here to Cheltenham on purpose to tell you."
"Why me?" she said, as though struck with fear at such an assertion on his part.
"I must tell some one, and I have not known whom else to tell. His father appears not at all anxious about him. His brother I do not altogether trust. Were I to go to these men, who are only looking after their money, I should be communicating with his enemies. Your mother already regards me as his enemy. If I told the police I should simply be brought into a court of justice, where I should be compelled to mention your name."
"Why mine?"
"I must begin the story from the beginning. One night I was coming home in London very late, about two o'clock, when whom