* * * * *
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. William Hope was not a
very uncommon name, but still, somehow, that one and the same document
should contain the names of Walter Clifford and William Hope, roused a
suspicion in his mind that this witness was the William Hope lying in his
own house so weak and ill that he did not like to go to him, and enter
upon such a terrible discussion as this.
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