But the scamp was certainly a scamp, even though he might not be a murderer, or he would have revealed the secret.

In fact, Mrs.Mountjoy believed in the matter exactly what Augustus had intended, and, so believing, had resolved that her daughter should suffer any purgatory rather than become Harry's wife.
But her daughter made her resolutions exactly in the contrary direction.
She in truth did know what had been done on that night, while her mother was in ignorance.

The extent of her mother's ignorance she understood, but she did not at all know where her mother had got her information.
She felt that Harry's secret was in hands other than he had intended, and that some one must have spoken of the scene.

It occurred to Florence at the moment that this must have come from Mountjoy himself, whom she believed,--and rightly believed,--to have been the only second person present on the occasion.

And if he had told it to any one, then must that "any one" know where and how he had disappeared.