She possessed herself of it unopposed.  But now Mama Therese found her tongue.

“What—­what do you mean?” she gasped, livid with fright.  Was not a fortune slipping through her avaricious fingers?  “What are you going to do?”

“Do?” Sofia cried.  “I don’t know, more than this:  I’m not going to stay another hour under this roof, I’m going to leave to-night—­now—­ immediately!  That’s what I’m going to do!”

“Where are you going?”

The question halted Sofia in the doorway.

“To find my father—­wherever he is!”

She left the two staring at each other, dumbfounded and aghast.

At the far end of the passage she flung open her bedchamber door, entered, turned up the light, and snatched her cloak and hat from pegs beneath the curtained shelf that held her scanty wardrobe.

Adjusting these before the mirror she could hear Therese bawling at Dupont to follow and stop her.  Sofia had little fear he would find heart to attempt that, none the less she hurried.  Once her hat was adjusted there was nothing to detain her; the best she had she stood in; no sentimental associations invested that room, the tomb of her defrauded childhood, the prison of her maltreated youth, to make her linger there, but only hateful ones to speed her going.

She turned and fled.

Stumbling on the stairs, she heard Therese still screaming imprecations and commands at Dupont, then the clumping of the man’s feet as, yielding at length, he started in pursuit.

Through the green baize door she burst into the cafe like a young tornado.  Every head turned her way with gaping mouths and protruding eyes of astonishment as she stopped at the caisse and brazenly, in the face of them all, plundered the till.

This was a matter of necessity.  Sofia had not one shilling of her own.  But those two had robbed her, what she took was not so much as a thousandth part of the money of which they had despoiled her.  Moreover, she dared not go out penniless to face London.

Snatching a handful of loose coin, she made for the door.  But the delay had been fatal.  Dupont was now at her heels, and displaying extraordinary agility in a man of his years of dissipation and sedentary habits.  And Therese was not far behind.

Seeing coins trickling through the fingers of the fugitive and falling to ring and spin upon the floor, the Frenchwoman raised an anguished shriek of “Thief!  Stop thief!”—­and such part of the audience as had remained in its seats rose up as one man.

In the same instant Dupont’s fingers clamped down on Sofia’s shoulder.  She screamed, and he chuckled and dragged her back.  Then his arm was struck up by a deft hand, the girl slipped from his hold and darted out through the doors.

Roaring with rage (now that his blood was up, his heart in the chase) Dupont turned upon the meddler.  This was young Mr. Karslake.  Dupont did not know him except by sight, but that slender, boyish figure and the semi-apologetic smile on Karslake’s lips did not inspire respect.  Blindly and with all his might Dupont swung his right to the other’s head, only to find it wasn’t there.