“Were you sorry not to see me?”
“The days I have not seen you are dead, and wiped off the calendar,” said Jim.
“Oh, before I forget,” said Eunice, “Mrs. Weatherwale has gone.”
“Mrs. Weatherwale!” he repeated, puzzled.
“I haven’t told you? No, of course not. I did not see you yesterday. But Mrs. Groat asked me to write to Mrs. Weatherwale, who is an old friend of hers, asking her to come and stay. I think Mrs. Groat is rather afraid of Digby.”
“And she came?” asked Jim.
The girl nodded.
“She came and stayed about one hour, then arrived my lord Digby, who bundled her unceremoniously into the street. There is no love lost there, either, Jim. The dear old lady hated him. She was a charming old soul and called me ‘darling.’ ”
“Who wouldn’t?” said Jim. “I can call you darling even though I am not a charming old soul. Go on. So she went away? I wonder what she knows about Digby?”
“She knows everything. She knows about Estremeda, of that I am sure. Jim, doesn’t that make a difference?”
He shook his head.
“If you mean does it make any difference about Digby inheriting his mother’s money when she gets it, I can tell you that it makes none. The will does not specify that he is the son of John Groat, and the fact that he was born before she married this unfortunate shipping clerk does not affect the issue.”
“When is the money to be made over to the Groats?”
“Next Thursday,” said Jim, with a groan, “and I am just as far from stopping the transfer of the property as I have ever been.”
He had not told her of his meeting with Lady Mary Danton. That was not his secret alone. Nor could he tell her that Lady Mary was the woman who had warned her.
They strolled across the Park towards the Serpentine and Jim was unusually preoccupied.
“Do you know, Eunice, that I have an uncanny feeling that you really are in some way associated with the Danton fortune?”
She laughed and clung tighter to his arm.
“Jim, you would make me Queen of England if you could,” she said, “and you have just as much chance of raising me to the throne as you have of proving that I am somebody else’s child. I don’t want to be anybody else’s, really,” she said. “I was very, very fond of my mother, and it nearly broke my heart when she died. And daddy was a darling.”
He nodded.
“Of course, it is a fantastic idea,” he said, “and I am flying in face of all the facts. I have taken the trouble to discover where you were born. I have a friend in Cape Town who made the inquiries for me.”
“Eunice May Weldon,” she laughed. “So you can abandon that idea, can’t you?” she said.
Strolling along by the side of the Serpentine, they had reached the bridge near the magazine and were standing waiting until a car had passed before they crossed the road. Somebody in the car raised his hat.
“Who was that?” said Jim.
“Digby Groat,” she smiled, “my nearly late employer! Don’t let us go to the teashop, Jim,” she said; “let us go to your flat—I’d love to.”
He looked at her dubiously.
“It is not customary for bachelors to give tea-parties to young females,” he said.
“I’m sure it is”—she waived aside his objection. “I’m perfectly certain it happens every day, only they don’t speak about it.”
The flat delighted her and she took off her coat and busied herself in the little kitchenette.
“You told me it was an attic with bare boards,” she said reproachfully as she was laying the cloth.
To Jim, stretched in his big chair, she was a thing of sheer delight. He wanted no more than to sit forever and watch her flitting from room to room. The sound of her fresh voice was a delicious narcotic, and even when she called him, as she did, again and again, to explain some curio of his which hung in the hall, the spell was not broken.
“Everything is speckless,” she said as she brought in the tea, “and I’m sure you haven’t polished up those brasses and cleaned that china.”
“You’re right first time,” said Jim lazily. “An unprepossessing lady comes in every morning at half-past seven and works her fingers to the bone, as she has told me more times than once, though she manages to keep more flesh on those bones than seems comfortable for her.”
“And there is your famous train,” she said, jumping up and going to the window as an express whizzed down the declivity. “Oh, Jim, look at those boys,” she gasped in horror.
Across the line and supported by two stout poles, one of which stood in the courtyard of the flat, was a stretch of thin telegraph wires, and on these a small and adventurous urchin was pulling himself across hand-over-hand, to the joy of his companions seated on the opposite wall of the cutting.
“The young devil,” said Jim admiringly.
Another train shrieked past, and running down into Euston trains moved at a good speed. The telegraph wire had sagged under the weight of the boy to such an extent that he had to lift up his legs to avoid touching the tops of the carriages.
“If the police catch him,” mused Jim, “they will fine him a sovereign and give him a birching. In reality he ought to be given a medal. These little beggars are the soldiers of the future, Eunice, and some day he will reproduce that fearlessness of danger, and he will earn the Victoria Cross a jolly sight more than I earned it.”
She laughed and dropped her head against his shoulder.
“You queer man,” she said, and then returned to the contemplation of the young climber, who had now reached the opposite wall amidst the approving yells and shouts of his diminutive comrades.
“Now let us drink our tea, because I must get back,” said the girl.
The cup was to her lips when the door opened and a
