"You can and you will, for you have enough determination and good principle to carry you through. Is this the house? I will wait in the hansom while you collect your luggage. Have you money to pay your landlady?"
Jean assented proudly. She went into the house as if in a dream, but very soon returned. Colonel Douglas smiled, as he saw her small handbag. But when she was driving to St. Pancras Station with him, she burst out passionately—
"Colonel Douglas, I shall never forgive you, if you don't help me to get away! I made my plans with such care. I hoped your sister might help me. I was counting on your taking this tour. I put all my trust in you, and you have utterly failed me. I shall never get over it, if you don't persuade grandfather to give me more liberty. I daresay you think me rash and foolish to build upon what you said at all, but when you bought my violets and never asked questions, it made me believe in you. I couldn't help it, and now you're shattering all my plans to pieces!"
"I am wanting you to build with bricks instead of cards," said the Colonel, smiling, and feeling it was quite impossible to help taking an interest in this impetuous unconventional little person. "You wait till my visit to you comes off, and then you will acknowledge, I have been your good genius."
Jean looked almost tearful when the train was starting. Colonel Douglas nodded brightly to her:
"Keep up your spirits. We shall meet again soon."
Half an hour afterwards, he was on his way to his sister's, and was severely reprimanded by her, when he arrived for his late appearance.
"Now, sir," she said to him when her guests had disappeared, and only she and her great friend, a Mrs. Gower, were left. "Give an account of yourself to-day. Why did you fail me?"
"An errand of—of mercy kept me," said the Colonel, leaning back in an easy chair and looking at his sister with a humorous twinkle in his eye.
"I was sure of it!" young Mrs. Talbot exclaimed, turning to her friend. "There never was such a man for laying himself out for impostors. He always has been like it, Jessie, from the time he was found helping a drunkard into a public-house when he was four years old. 'Poor man is firsty!' he explained when his nurse dragged him off. Some one told me he was nicknamed in his regiment 'The humbug's hope.' Last week, he was accosted by a German female in the streets. She had landed that day in a strange country, she said, and she had lost her purse. She appealed to the 'Herr,' for she said she saw 'honour in his eye.' Don't laugh; that was a fact. He told me so himself—didn't you, Phil?"