His companion bestowed on him a sidelong and somewhat anxious look. Mr. Priestley was far too preoccupied to notice it, but a shrewd observer might have summed it up as the calculating look of one hastily reckoning up comparative values.
If this were so, she made her decision with commendable promptitude. “I am not engaged to be married, Mr. Mullins,” she said, “I am married.”
“God bless my soul!” exclaimed Mr. Priestley, looking at her with new eyes. Somehow he could not associate this flower-like innocence (as it was after all now plainly proved to be) with the coarsities of married life. She might be of marriageable years, no doubt she was; but in essence she was still a child—and children are forbidden to marry. So should grown-up children be too, thought Mr. Priestley, reluctantly abandoning in favour of its legal owner the rôle of protector which he had been beginning again to contemplate. The next instant he hastily picked it up again. Of course she needed protection, now more than ever —from this coarse, obtuse, gross-bodied husband of hers! Mr. Priestley had no doubt at all that this must be a correct description of the absent Mr. Spettigue. “God bless my soul!” he repeated.
With intuitive genius the girl must have been following the line of his thoughts. A frightened look appeared in her lustrous eyes as she gazed at him in mute entreaty.
“That’s the awful part, you see,” she faltered. “If I were single it—it wouldn’t matter so much, but my husband——!” She choked. “He’d never forgive me!” she concluded mournfully—but not so mournfully that she was precluded from watching Mr. Priestley’s reactions to this interesting piece of news very closely indeed. It was the crux of the situation, and if Mr. Priestley did not recognise the fact, his companion certainly did.
A genuine tear glistened in her eye. “My life would be ruined!” she quavered. “Absolutely ruined!”
Mr. Priestley drew a deep breath. “Don’t distress yourself, my dear young lady, please,” he implored. “We—we must see what can be done. Tell me the rest of the story.”
The girl drew a deep breath also. In an artistically shaky voice she proceeded to tell the rest of her story.
It had been impossible to confide in her husband. “He —he wouldn’t quite understand,” she explained with pathetic dignity, and Mr. Priestley nodded violent agreement. So, she had decided that the best thing to do was to get some one to burgle the Fox’s lair for her, and had therefore inserted the newspaper advertisement which Mr. Mullins had answered. Their subsequent correspondence was, of course, fresh in his memory. In the meantime she herself had not been idle. She had found out where the letters were kept and, by an intelligent system connected with a certain inmate of the household itself, was able to keep herself informed of its master’s doings. Through this medium news had reached her of the projected week-end visit and the consequent closing of the house, and she had arranged the raid accordingly.
“I see,” observed Mr. Priestley very thoughtfully. “Yes, all this certainly must make things very much clearer.”