The gentleman hesitated. Then his eyes brightened; and he said, “Then call the police. Call them quickly. You have a ring of mine about you — an heirloom of my family. You shall account for it. Ah! I have you now, you vagabond.”
“Pshaw!” said Jack, recovering from a momentary check, “she sent me the ring by the hands of that porter, although I refused it. I might as well accuse her of stealing my money.”
“It shall be refunded at once,” said the gentleman, reddening and pulling out his purse. “How much did you give her”’
“How should I know?” said Jack with scorn. “I do not count what I give to women who are in need. I gave her what I found in my pocket. Are you willing to give me what you find in yours?”
“By heaven, you are an incredibly impudent swindler,” cried the gentleman, looking at him with inexpressible feeling.
“Come, gentlemen. “ said an official, advancing between them, “couldn’t you settle your little difference somewhere else?*
“I am a passenger,” said Jack; “and am endeavoring to leave the station. If it is your business to keep order here, I wish you would rid me of this gentleman. He has annoyed me ever since the train started from Slough.”
“I am in a most painful position,” said the old gentleman, with emotion. “I have lost my child here; and this man knows her whereabouts. He will tell me nothing; and I — I don’t know what to do.” Then, turning to Jack with a fresh explosion of wrath, he cried, “Once for all, you villain, will you tell me who your employers are?”
“Once for all,” replied Jack, “I will tell you nothing, because I have nothing to tell you. You refuse to believe me; you are infernally impertinent to me; you talk about my employers and of spying and kidnapping: I think you are mad.”
“Are you not a theatrical agent? Answer that.”
“No. I am not a theatrical agent. As I told you before, I am a composer and teacher of music. If you have any pupils for me, I shall be glad to teach them: if not, go your way, and let me go mine. I am tired of you.”
“There, sir,” said the official, “the gentleman can’t answer you no fairer nor that. If you have a charge to make against him, why, charge him. If not, as he says, you had better move on. Let me call you a cab, and you can follow the young lady. That’s the best thing you can do. She might run as far as Scotland while you’re talking. Send down a ‘ansom there, Bill, will you?”
The man laid his hand persuasively on the arm of the old gentleman, who hesitated, with his lip trembling.
“Sir,” said Jack, with sudden dignity: “on my honor I am a perfect stranger to your daughter and her affairs. You know all that passed between us. If you do not wish to lose sight of me, give me your card; and I will send you my address as soon as I have one.”
“I request — I — I implore you not to trifle with me in this matter,” said the gentleman, slowly taking out his card case. “It would be a — a heartless thing to do. Here is my card. If you have any information, or can acquire any, it shall be liberally paid for — most liberally paid.
Jack, offended afresh, looked at him with scorn; snatched the card, and turned on his heel. The gentleman looked wistfully after him, sighed, shivered, and got into the cab.
The card was inscribed, “Mr. Sigismund Brailsford, Kensington Palace Gardens.”
CHAPTER V
A fortnight later the Sutherlands, accompanied by Mrs Beatty, were again in London, on their way to the Isle of Wight. It had been settled that Herbert should go to Ventnor for a month with his mother, so that Mary and he might sketch the scenery of the island together. He had resisted this arrangement at first on the ground that Mrs Herbert’s presence would interfere with his enjoyment; but Mary, who had lost her own mother when an infant, had ideas of maternal affection which made Adrian’s unfilial feeling shocking to her. She entreated him to come to Ventnor; and he yielded, tempted by the prospect of working beside her, and foreseeing that he could easily avoid his mother’s company whenever it became irksome to him.
One day, whilst they were still in London at the hotel in Onslow Gardens, Mr Sutherland, seeing his daughter with her hat and cloak on, asked whither she was going.
“I am going to the Brailsfords’, to see Madge,” she replied.
“Now what do you want to go there for?” grumbled Mr. Sutherland. “I do not like your associating with that girl.”
“Why, papa? Are you afraid that she will make me run away and go on the stage?”
“I didn’t say anything of the kind. But she can’t be a very rightminded young woman, or she wouldn’t have done so herself. However, I have no objection to your calling on the family. They are very nice people — well connected; and Mr. Brailsford is a clever man. But don’t go making a companion of Madge.”
“I shall not have the opportunity, I am sorry to say. Poor Madge! Nobody has a good word for her.”
Mr. Sutherland muttered a string t>f uncomplimentary epithets; but Mary went out without heeding him. At Kensington Palace Gardens she found Magdalen Brailsford alone.
“They are all out,” said Magdalen when Mary had done kissing her. “They are visiting, or shopping, or doing something else equally intellectual.I am supposed to be in disgrace; so I am never asked to go with them. As I would not go if they begged me on their knees, I bear the punishment with fortitude.”
“But what have you done, Madge? Won’t you tell me? Aunt Jane said that her conscience would not permit her to pour such a story into my young ears; and then, of course, I refused to hear it from anybody but yourself, much to Aunt Jane’s disgust; for she was burning to tell me. Except that you ran away and went on the stage, I know nothing.
“There is nothing else to know; for that is all that happened.”
“But how did it come about?”
“Will you promise not to tell?”
“I promise faithfully.”
“You must keep your promise; for I have accomplices who are not suspected, and who will help me when I repeat the exploit, as I fully intend to do the very instant I see my way to success. Do you know where we lived before we came to this house?”
“No. You have lived here ever since I knew you.”
“We had lodgings in Gower Street. Mary, did you ever ride in an omnibus?”
“No. But I should not be in the least ashamed to do so if I had occasion.”
“How would you like to have to make five pounds worth of clothes last you for two years?”
“I should not like that.”
“Lots of people have to do it. We had, when we lived in Gower Street. Father wrote for the papers; and we never had any money, and were always in debt. But we went to the theatres — with orders, of course — much oftener than we do now; and we either walked home or took our carriage, the omnibus. We were recklessly extravagant, and thought nothing of throwing away a shilling on flowers and paper fans to decorate the rooms. I am sure we spent a fortune on three-penny cretonne, to cover the furniture when its shabbiness became downright indecent. We were very fond of dwelling on the lavish way we would spend money if father ever came into the Brailsford property, which seemed the most unlikely thing in the world. But it happened, as unlikely things often do. All the rest of the family — I mean all of it that concerned us — were drowned in the Solent in a yacht accident; and we found ourselves suddenly very rich, and,