If Loveday had, as she had stated, important business to transact that evening, she certainly set about it in a strange fashion.
After she quitted Mademoiselle’s room, she went straight out of the house, without leaving a message of any sort for either Mrs. or Major Druce. She walked the length of Portland Place in leisurely fashion, and then, having first ascertained that her movements were not being watched, she called a hansom, and desired the man to drive her to Madame Céline’s, a fashionable milliner’s in Old Bond Street.
At Madame Céline’s she spent close upon half-an-hour, giving many and minute directions for the making of a hat, which assuredly, when finished, would compare with nothing in the way of millinery that she had ever before put upon her head.
From Madame Céline’s the hansom conveyed her to an undertaker’s shop, at the corner of South Savile Street, and here she spent a brief ten minutes in conversation with the undertaker himself in his little back parlour.
From the undertaker’s she drove home to her rooms in Gower Street, and then, before she divested herself of hat and coat, she wrote a brief note to Major Druce, requesting him to meet her on the following morning at Eglacé’s, the confectioner’s, in South Savile Street, at nine o’clock punctually.
This note she committed to the charge of the cabdriver, desiring him to deliver it at Portland Place on his way back to his stand.
“They’ve queer ways of doing things—these people!” said the Major, as he opened and read the note. “Suppose I must keep the appointment though, confound it. I can’t see that she can possibly have found out anything by just sitting still in a corner for a couple of hours! And I’m confident she didn’t give that beast Cassimi one quarter the attention she bestowed on other people.”
In spite of his grumbling, however, the Major kept his appointment, and nine o’clock the next morning saw him shaking hands with Miss Brooke on Eglacé’s doorstep.
“Dismiss your hansom,” she said to him. “I only want you to come a few doors down the street, to the French Protestant church, to which you have sometimes escorted Mdlle. Cunier.”
At the church door Loveday paused a moment.
“Before we enter,” she said, “I want you to promise that whatever you may see going on there—however greatly you may be surprised—you will make no disturbance, not so much as open your lips till we come out.”
The Major, not a little bewildered, gave the required promise; and, side by side, the two entered the church.
It was little more than a big room; at the farther end, in the middle of the nave, stood the pulpit, and immediately behind this was a low platform, enclosed by a brass rail.
Behind this brass rail, in black Geneva gown, stood the pastor of the church, and before him, on cushions, kneeled two persons, a man and a woman.
These two persons and an old man, the verger, formed the whole of the congregation. The position of the church, amid shops and narrow backyards, had necessitated the filling in of every one of its windows with stained glass; it was, consequently, so dim that, coming in from the outside glare of sunlight, the Major found it difficult to make out what was going on at the farther end.
The verger came forward and offered to show them to a seat. Loveday shook her head—they would be leaving in a minute, she said, and would prefer standing where they were.
The Major began to take in the situation.
“Why they’re being married!” he said in a loud whisper. “What on earth have you brought me in here for?”
Loveday laid her finger on her lips and frowned severely at him.
The marriage service came to an end, the pastor extended his black-gowned arms like the wings of a bat and pronounced the benediction; the man and woman rose from their knees and proceeded to follow him into the vestry.
The woman was neatly dressed in a long dove-coloured travelling cloak. She wore a large hat, from which fell a white gossamer veil that completely hid her face from view. The man was small, dark and slight, and as he passed on to the vestry beside his bride, the Major at once identified him as his mother’s butler.
“Why, that’s Lebrun!” he said in a still louder whisper than before. “Why, in the name of all that’s wonderful, have you brought me here to see that fellow married?”
“You’d better come outside if you can’t keep quiet,” said Loveday severely, and leading the way out of the church as she spoke.
Outside, South Savile Street was busy with early morning traffic.
“Let us go back to Eglacé’s,” said Loveday, “and have some coffee. I will explain to you there all you are wishing to know.”
But before the coffee could be brought to them, the Major had asked at least a dozen questions.
Loveday put them all on one side.
“All in good time,” she said. “You are leaving out the most important question of all. Have you no curiosity to know who was the bride that Lebrun has chosen?”
“I don’t suppose it concerns me in the slightest degree,” he answered indifferently; “but since you wish me to ask the question—Who was she?”
“Lucie Cunier, lately your mother’s amanuensis.”
“The ⸻!” cried the Major, jumping to his feet and uttering an exclamation that must be indicated by a blank.
“Take it calmly,” said Loveday; “don’t rave. Sit down and I’ll tell you all about it. No, it is not the doing of your friend Cassimi, so you need not threaten to put a bullet into him; the girl has married Lebrun of her own free will—no one has forced her into it.”
“Lucie has married Lebrun of her own free will!” he echoed, growing very white and taking the chair which faced Loveday at the little table.
“Will you have
