For we must inform the reader that he had written to Mr.Middleton for another L100, not much expecting to get it, and that it had come down by return of post in a draft on a bank in Derby.
* * * * * Stout Colonel Clifford was now a very unhappy man.

The soul of honor himself, he could not fully believe that his own son had been guilty of perfidy and crime.

But how could he escape _doubts_, and very grave doubts too?
The communication was made by a gentleman who did not seem really to know more about it than he had been told, but then he was a clergyman, with no appearance of heat or partiality.

He had been easily convinced that the lady herself ought to have come and said more about it, and had left an attested copy of the certificate in his (Colonel Clifford's) hands with a sort of simplicity that looked like one gentleman dealing with another.

One thing, however, puzzled him sore in this certificate--the witness being William Hope.