CHAPTER XX

TWO WITNESSES





Mr. Prendergast had given himself two days to do all that was to be
done, before he told Herbert Fitzgerald the whole of the family
history. He had promised that he would then let him know all that
there was to be known; and he had done so advisedly, considering
that it would be manifestly unjust to leave him in the dark an hour
longer than was absolutely necessary. To expect that Sir Thomas
himself should, with his own breath and his own words, make the
revelation either to his son or to his wife, was to expect a
manifest impossibility. He would, altogether, have sank under such
an effort, as he had already sank under the effort of telling it to
Mr. Prendergast; nor could it be left to the judgment of Sir Thomas
to say when the story should be told. He had now absolutely
abandoned all judgment in the matter. He had placed himself in the
hands of a friend, and he now expected that that friend should do
all that there was to be done. Mr. Prendergast had therefore felt
himself justified in making this promise.

But how was he to set about the necessary intervening work, and how
pass the intervening hours? It had already been decided that Mr.
Abraham Mollett, when he called, should be shown, as usual, into the
study, but that he should there find himself confronted, not with