"But it's true, Sir Boreas?"
"I heard it spoken of two or three days ago, Mr. Crocker, and I believe it to be true."
"He was my friend, Sir Boreas; my particular friend. Isn't it a wonderful thing,—that one's particular friend should turn out to be Duca di Crinola! And he didn't know a word of it himself. I feel quite sure that he didn't know a word of it."
"I really can't say, Mr. Crocker; but as you have now expressed your wonder, perhaps you had better go back to your room and do your work."
"He pretends he knew it three days ago!" said Crocker, as he returned to his room. "I don't believe a word of it. He'd have written to me had it been known so long ago as that. I suppose he had too many things to think of, or he would have written to me."
"Go aisy, Crocker," said Geraghty.
"What do you mean by that? It's just the thing he would have done."
"I don't believe he ever wrote to you in his life," said Bobbin.
"You don't know anything about it. We were here together two years before you came into the office. Mr. Jerningham knows that we were always friends. Good heavens! Duca di Crinola! I tell you what it is, Mr. Jerningham. If it were ever so, I couldn't do anything to-day. You must let me go. There are mutual friends of ours to whom it is quite essential that I should talk it over." Then he took his hat and marched off to Holloway, and would have told the news to Miss Clara Demijohn had he succeeded in finding that young lady at home. Clara was at that moment discussing with Mrs. Duffer the wonderful fact that Mr. Walker and not Lord Hampstead had been kicked and trodden to pieces at Gimberley Green.
But even Æolus, great as he was, expressed himself with some surprise that afternoon to Mr. Jerningham as to the singular fortune which had befallen George Roden. "I believe it to be quite true, Mr. Jerningham. These wonderful things do happen sometimes."