“You met him, did you? When?”
“Oh—I’ll tell you all about
that afterwards. It’s getting late.
We shall have lots of talk. You’ll let
me take you home? We’ll have a cab, shall
we? Lady Pollys don’t walk about the streets
on a wet night.”
She stood in thought.
“I want you to do something for me.”
“Right you are! Tell me and I’ll
do it like a shot, see if I don’t.”
His arm again encircled her, and this time Polly did
not talk of her ’at or her ’air.
Indeed, she bent her head, half hiding her face against
him.
“You know that letter I sent you?”
“What’s in it? Something nicey-picey?”
“I want you to let me go to the ’ouse
with you—just to the door—and
I want you to give me that letter back—just
as it is—without opening it. You will,
won’t you, deary?”
“Of course I will, if you really mean it.”
“I do, it was a narsty letter. I
couldn’t bear to have you read it now.”
Gammon had no difficulty in imagining the kind of
epistle which Polly would desire suppressed; yet,
for some obscure reason, he would rather have read
it. But his promise was given. Polly, in
turn, promised to write another letter for him as soon
as possible.
So they drove in a hansom, through a night which washed
the fog away, to Kennington Road, and whilst Polly
kept her place in the vehicle Gammon ran upstairs.
There lay the letter on his dressing-table. He
hastened down with it, and before handing it to its
writer kissed the envelope.
“Go along!” exclaimed Polly, in high good
humour, as she reached out with eager fingers.
Late as it was he accompanied her to Shaftesbury Avenue,
and they parted tenderly after having come to an agreement
about the next evening.
LORD POLPERRO’S REPRESENTATIVE
By discreet inquiry Mr. Gammon procured an introduction
to “Debrett,” who supplied him with a
great deal of information. In the first place
he learned that the present Lord Polperro, fourth of
that title, was not the son, but the brother of the
Lord Polperro preceding him, both being offspring,
it was plain, of the peer whose will occasioned a
lawsuit some forty years ago. Granted the truth
of scandalous rumour, which had such remarkable supports
in facial characteristics, the present bearer of the
title would be, in fact, half-brother to Francis Quodling.
Again, it was discoverable that the Lord Polperro
of to-day succeeded to the barony in the very year
of Mrs. Clover’s husband’s second disappearance.
“Just what I said,” was Gammon’s
mental comment as he thumped the aristocratic pages.
Now for the women. To begin with, Lord Polperro
was set down a bachelor—ha! ha! Then
he had one sister, Miss Adela Trefoyle, older than
himself, and that might very well be the lady who was
seen beside him at the theatre. Then again, though
his elder brother’s male children had died,
there was living a daughter, by name Adeline, recently
wedded to—by jorrocks!—Lucian
Gildersleeve, Esquire. Why, here was “the
whole boiling of ’em!”
