“When did you see it last, for certain?”
“I laid both despatches on the desk in my room when I went out to make sure that Margaret had everything comfortable before she started.”
“And where was this Mr. Lithgow then?”
“He was sitting over the fire in my room, trying to warm himself; he seemed very cold.”
“Clearly, then, Mr. Lithgow is now in possession of the telegram, which he probably, or rather certainly, sent himself. But how he came to know anything about the girl, or what possible motive he can have had—” muttered Maitland to himself. “She has never been in any place, Miss Marlett, since she came to you, where she could have made the man’s acquaintance?”
“It is impossible to say whom girls may meet, and how they may manage it, Mr. Maitland,” said Miss Marlett sadly; when Janey broke in:
“I am sure Margaret never met him here. She was not a girl to have such a secret, and she could not have acted a part so as to have taken me in. I saw him first, out of the window. Margaret was very unhappy; she had been crying. I said, ‘Here’s a gentleman in furs, Margaret; he must have come for you.’ Then she looked out and said, ‘It is not my guardian; it is the gentleman whom I saw twice with my father.’”
“What kind of a man was he to look at?”
“He was tall, and dark, and rather good-looking, with a slight black mustache. He had a fur collar that went up to his eyes almost, and he was not a young man. He was a gentleman,” said Janey, who flattered herself that she recognized such persons as bear without reproach that grand old name—when she saw them.
“Would you know him again if you met him?”