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Renouard, his legs stretched out and his chin on his breast, said nothing. A sensation which was not curiosity, but rather a vague nervous anxiety, distinctly unpleasant, like a mysterious symptom of some malady, prevented him from getting up and going away.

“Mixed feelings,” the Editor opined. “Many fellows out here receive news from home with mixed feelings. But what will his feelings be when he hears what I am going to tell you now? For we know he has not heard yet. Six months ago a city clerk, just a common drudge of finance, gets himself convicted of a common embezzlement or something of that kind. Then seeing he’s in for a long sentence he thinks of making his conscience comfortable, and makes a clean breast of an old story of tampered with, or else suppressed, documents, a story which clears altogether the honesty of our ruined gentleman. That embezzling fellow was in a position to know, having been employed by the firm before the smash. There was no doubt about the character being cleared–but where the cleared man was nobody could tell. Another sensation in society. And then Miss Moorsom says: ‘He will come back to claim me, and I’ll marry him.’ But he didn’t come back. Between you and me I don’t think he was much wanted–except by Miss Moorsom. I imagine she’s used to have her own way. She grew impatient, and declared that if she knew where the man was she would go to him. But all that could be got out of the old butler was that the last envelope bore the postmark of our beautiful city; and that this was the only address of ‘Master Arthur’ that he ever had. That and no more. In fact the fellow was at his last gasp–with a bad heart. Miss Moorsom wasn’t allowed to see him. She had gone herself into the country to learn what she could, but she had to stay downstairs while the old chap’s wife went up to the invalid. She brought down the scrap of intelligence I’ve told you of. He was already too far gone to be cross-examined on it, and that very night he died. He didn’t leave behind him much to go by, did he? Our Willie hinted to me that there had been pretty stormy days in the professor’s house, but–here they are. I have a notion she isn’t the kind of everyday young lady who may be permitted to gallop about the world all by herself–eh? Well, I think it rather fine of her, but I quite understand that the professor needed all his philosophy under the circumstances. She is his only child now–and brilliant–what? Willie positively spluttered trying to describe her to me; and I could see directly you came in that you had an uncommon experience.”

Renouard, with an irritated gesture, tilted his hat more forward on his eyes, as though he were bored. The Editor went on with the remark that to be sure neither he (Renouard) nor yet Willie were much used to meet girls of that remarkable superiority. Willie when learning business with a firm in London, years before, had seen none but boarding-house society, he guessed. As to himself in the good old days, when he trod the glorious flags of Fleet Street, he neither had access to, nor yet would have cared for the swells. Nothing interested him then but parliamentary politics and the oratory of the House of Commons.

He paid to this not very distant past the tribute of a tender, reminiscent smile, and returned to his first idea that for a society girl her action was rather fine. All the same the professor could not be very pleased. The fellow if he was as pure as a lily now was just about as devoid of the goods of the earth. And there were misfortunes, however undeserved, which damaged a man’s standing permanently. On the other hand, it was difficult to oppose cynically a noble impulse–not to speak of the great love at the root of it. Ah! Love! And then the lady was quite capable of going off by herself. She was of age, she had money of her own, plenty of pluck too. Moorsom must have concluded that it was more truly paternal, more prudent too, and generally safer all round to let himself be dragged into this chase. The aunt came along for the same reasons. It was given out at home as a trip round the world of the usual kind.