‘Would you not be unhappy if it were Mr Finn?’ said Mary, jumping up from her knees.  ’I shall go to him.  I should go mad if I were to remain here and know nothing about it but what Silverbridge will tell me.’

‘I will telegraph Mr Finn.’

’Mr Finn won’t care.  Men are so heartless.  They write about each other just as though it did not signify in the least whether anybody were dead or alive.  I shall go to him.’

‘You cannot do that.’

’I don’t care now what anybody may think.  I choose to be considered as belonging to him, and if papa were here I would do the same.’  It was of course not difficult to make her understand that she could not go to Harrington, but it was by no means easy to keep her tranquil.  She would send a telegram herself.  This was debated for a long time, till at last Lady Mary insisted that she was not subject to Mrs Finn’s authority.  ’If papa were here, even then I would send it.’  And she did send it, in her own name, regardless of the fact pointed out to her by Mrs Finn, that the people at the post-office would thus know her secret.  ’It is no secret,’ she said.  ‘I don’t want it to be a secret.’  The telegram went in the following words.  ’I have heard it.  I am so wretched.  Send me one word to say how you are.’  She got an answer back, with Tregear’s own name to it, on that afternoon.  ’Do not be unhappy.  I am doing well.  Silverbridge is with me.’

On the Thursday Gerald came home from Scotland.  He had arranged his little affair with Lord Percival, not however without some difficulty.  Lord Percival had declared that he did not understand I.O.U.s in an affair of that kind.  He had always thought that gentlemen did not play for stakes for which they could not pay at once.  This was not said to Gerald himself;—­or the result would have been calamitous.  Nidderdale was the go-between, and at last arranged it,—­not however till he had pointed out that Percival having won so large a sum of money from a lad under twenty-one years was very lucky in receiving substantial security for its payment.

Gerald has chosen the period of his father’s absence for his return.  It was necessary that the story of the gambling debt should be told the Duke in February!  Silverbridge had explained that to him, and he had quite understood it.  He, indeed, would be up at Oxford in February, and, in that case, the first horror of the thing would be left to poor Silverbridge!  Thinking of this, Gerald felt that he was bound to tell his father himself.  He resolved that he would do so, but he was anxious to postpone the evil day.  He lingered therefore in Scotland till he knew that his father was in Barsetshire.

On his arrival he was told of Tregear’s accident.  ’Oh Gerald, have you heard?’ said his sister.  He had not as yet heard, and then the history was repeated to him.  Mary did not attempt to conceal her own feelings.  She was as open with her brother as she had been with Mrs Finn.