“I have been your slave too long,” the man cried, and the girl became aware that the door was open and that the old man stood inside of it with a card upon a silver salver. She came quickly forward and took the card. Jim heard the cry of pleasure, and the girl came running out into the hall.
“You!” she exclaimed, her eyes shining. “I had no right to expect you so soon. Oh, thank you!” and she gave him both her hands.
Jim did not need her words to recognise in her the “little girl” of Mr. Haslitt’s description. Little in actual height Betty Harlowe certainly was not, but she was such a slender trifle of a girl that the epithet seemed in place. Her hair was dark brown in colour, with a hint of copper where the light caught it, parted on one side and very neatly dressed about her small head. The broad forehead and oval face were of a clear pallor and made vivid the fresh scarlet of her lips; and the large pupils of her grey eyes gave to her a look which was at once haunting and wistful. As she held out her hands in a warm gratitude and seized his, she seemed to him a creature of delicate flame and fragile as fair china. She looked him over with one swift comprehensive glance and breathed a little sigh of relief.
“I shall give you all my troubles to carry from now on,” she said, with a smile.
“To be sure. That’s what I am here for,” he answered. “But don’t take me for anything very choice and particular.”
Betty laughed again and, holding him by the sleeve, drew him into the library.
“Monsieur Espinosa,” she said, presenting the stranger to Jim. “He is from Cataluna, but he spends so much of his life in Dijon that we claim him as a citizen.”
The Catalan bowed and showed a fine set of strong white teeth.
“Yes, I have the honour to represent a great Spanish firm of wine-growers. We buy the wines here to mix with our better brands, and we sell wine here to mix with their cheaper ones.”
“You mustn’t give your trade secrets away to me,” Jim replied shortly. He disliked Espinosa on sight, as they say, and he was at no very great pains to conceal his dislike. Espinosa was altogether too brilliant a personage. He was a big, broad-shouldered man with black shining hair and black shining eyes, a florid complexion, a curled moustache, and gleaming rings upon his fingers.
“Mr. Frobisher has come from London to see me on quite different business,” Betty interposed.
“Yes?” said the Catalan a little defiantly, as though he meant to hold his ground.
“Yes,” replied Betty, and she held out her hand to him. Espinosa raised it reluctantly to his lips and kissed it.
“I shall see you when you return,” said Betty, and she walked to the door.
“If I go away,” Espinosa replied stubbornly. “It is not certain, Mademoiselle Betty, that I shall go”; and with a ceremonious bow to Jim he walked out of the room; but not so quickly but that Betty glanced swiftly from one man to the other with keen comparing eyes, and Jim detected the glance. She closed the door and turned back to Jim with a friendly little grimace which somehow put him in a good humour. He was being compared to another man to his advantage, and however modest one may be, such a comparison promotes a pleasant warmth.
“More trouble, Miss Harlowe,” he said with a smile, “but this time the sort of trouble which you must expect for a good many years to come.”
He moved towards her, and they met at one of the two side windows which looked out upon the courtyard. Betty sat down in the window-seat.
“I really ought to be grateful to him,” she said, “for he made me laugh. And it seems to me ages since I laughed”; she looked out of the window and her eyes suddenly filled with tears.
“Oh! don’t, please,” cried Jim in a voice of trouble.
The smile trembled once more on Betty’s lips deliciously.
“I won’t,” she replied.
“I was so glad to hear you laugh,” he continued, “after your unhappy telegram to my partner and before I told you my good news.”
Betty looked up at him eagerly.
“Good news?”
Jim Frobisher took once more from his long envelope the two letters which Waberski had sent to his firm and handed them to Betty.
“Read them,” he said, “and notice the dates.”
Betty glanced at the handwriting.
“From Monsieur Boris,” she cried, and she settled down in the window-seat to study them. In her short black frock with her slim legs in their black silk stockings extended and her feet crossed, and her head and white neck bent over the sheets of Waberski’s letters, she looked to Jim like a girl fresh from school. She was quick enough, however, to appreciate the value of the letters.
“Of course I always knew that it was money that Monsieur Boris wanted,” she said. “And when my aunt’s will was read and I found that everything had been left to me, I made up my mind to consult you and make some arrangement for him.”
“There was no obligation upon you,” Jim protested. “He wasn’t really a relation at all. He married Mrs. Harlowe’s sister, that’s all.”
“I know,” replied Betty, and she laughed. “He always objected to me because I would call him ‘Monsieur Boris’ instead of ‘uncle.’ But I meant to do something nevertheless. Only he gave me no time. He bullied me first of all, and I do hate being bullied—don’t you, Mr. Frobisher?”
“I do.”
Betty looked at the letters again.
“That’s when I snapped me the fingers at him, I suppose,” she continued, with a little gurgle of delight in the phrase. “Afterwards he brought this horrible charge
