"Who's Miss Ethel Kenyon?" he asked—drawing a bow at a venture—of his neighbor in the dingy little coffeehouse into which he had turned. It was ten to one that the man would not know; but he would ask.
man did know. "She's an actress," he said. "I went to see her the other night. Pretty girl—going to get married and leave the stage. My brother's a scene shifter at the Frivolity—knows all about her."
"Who is she going to marry?"
"Oh, I don't know—some idle young chap that wants her money, I believe. She ain't the common sort of actress, you know. Bit of a swell, with sixty thousand pounds of her own."
"Oh," said his interlocutor, vaguely. "And—has she any relations?"
"Well, that I can't tell you. Stop a bit, though: I did hear tell of a brother—a doctor, I believe. But I couldn't be sure of it."
"Could you get to know if you wanted?"
The young fellow turned and surveyed his questioner with some doubt. "Dare say I could if I chose," he said. "What do you want to know for, mate?"
"I've been away—out of England for a long time—and I think they're people who used to know me," said Francis Trent, improvising his story readily. "I thought they could put me on the way of work if I could come across them; but I don't know if it's the same."