Perhaps this may have had some influence upon his feelings in this his
first meeting with the father of the woman he loved.
Henry Dunbar told the story of the murder. The two men were
inexpressibly shocked by this story.
"But where is Sampson Wilmot?" exclaimed Mr. Balderby. "It was he whom I
sent to meet you, knowing that he was the only person in the office who
remembered you, or whom you remembered."
"Sampson was taken ill upon the way, according to his brother's story,"
Mr. Dunbar answered. "Joseph left the poor old man somewhere upon the
road."
"He did not say where?"
"No; and, strange to say, I forgot to ask him the question. The poor
fellow amused me by old memories of the past on the road between
Southampton and this place, and we therefore talked very little of the
present."
"Sampson must be very ill," exclaimed Mr. Balderby, "or he would
certainly have returned to St. Gundolph Lane to tell me what had taken
place."
Mr. Dunbar smiled.
"If he was too ill to go on to Southampton, he would, of course, be too
ill to return to London," he said, with supreme indifference.
Mr. Balderby, who was a good-hearted man, was distressed at the idea of
Sampson Wilmot's desolation; an old man, stricken with sudden illness,
and abandoned to strangers.
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