for such gossip was almost confined to Mr
Lyon's congregation, her Church pupils, Miss Louisa Jermyn among them, having
been satisfied by her father's written statement that she was gone on a visit of
uncertain duration. But on this day of Esther's call in Malthouse Yard, the Miss
Jermyns in their walk saw her getting into the Transome's carriage, which they
had previously observed to be waiting, and which they now saw bowled along on
the road towards Little Treby. It followed that only a few hours later the news
reached the astonished ears of Matthew Jermyn.
    Entirely ignorant of those converging indications and small links of
incident which had raised Christian's conjectures, and had gradually contributed
to put him in possession of the facts; ignorant too of some busy motives in the
mind of his obliged servant Johnson; Jermyn was not likely to see at once how
the momentous information that Esther was the surviving Bycliffe could possibly
have reached Harold. His daughters naturally leaped, as others had done, to the
conclusion that the Transomes, seeking a governess for little Harry, had had
their choice directed to Esther, and observed that they must have attracted her
by a high salary to induce her to take charge of such a small pupil; though of
course it was important that his English and French should be carefully attended
to from the first. Jermyn, hearing this suggestion, was not without a momentary
hope that it might be true, and that Harold was still safely unconscious of
having under the same roof with him the legal claimant of the family estate.
    But a mind in the grasp of a terrible anxiety is not credulous of easy
solutions. The one stay that bears up our hopes is sure to appear frail, and if
looked at long will seem to totter. Too much depended on that unconsciousness of
Harold's; and although Jermyn did not see the course of things that could have
disclosed and combined the various items of knowledge which he had imagined to
be his own secret, and therefore his safeguard, he saw quite clearly what was
likely to be the result of the disclosure. Not only would Harold Transome be no
longer afraid of him, but also, by marrying Esther (and Jermyn at once felt sure
of this issue), he would be triumphantly freed from my unpleasant consequences,
and could pursue much at his ease the gratification of ruining Matthew Jermyn.
The prevision of an enemy's triumphant ease is in any case sufficiently
irritating to hatred, and there were reasons why it was peculiarly exasperating
here; but Jermyn had not the leisure now for mere fruitless emotion;