When they were once more out in the square, side by side, Miss Mackenzie took hold of her cousin's arm and walked on for a few steps in silence, in the direction of Great Queen Street—that is to say, away from the city, towards which she knew her cousin would go in pursuit of his own business. And indeed the hour was now close at hand in which he should be sitting as a director at the Shadrach Fire Assurance Office. If not at the Shadrach by two, or, with all possible allowance for the shortcoming of a generally punctual director, by a quarter past two, he would be too late for his guinea; and now, as he looked at his watch, it wanted only ten minutes to two. He was very particular about these guineas, and the chambers of the Shadrach were away in Old Broad Street. Nevertheless he walked on with her.
"John," she said, when they had walked half the length of that side of the square, "I have heard dreadful news."
Then that deed of gift was, after all, a fact; and Mr Slow, instead of being a rogue, must be the honestest old lawyer in London! He must have been at work in discovering the wrong that had been done, and was now about to reveal it to the world. Some such idea as this had glimmered across Mr Ball's mind as he had sat in Mr Slow's outer office, with his chin still resting on his umbrella.
But though some such idea as this did cross his mind, his thought on the instant was of his cousin.
"What dreadful news, Margaret?"
"It is about my money."
"Stop a moment, Margaret. Are you sure that you ought to tell it to me?"
"If I don't, to whom shall I tell it? And how can I bear it without telling it to some one?"
"Did Mr Slow bid you speak of it to me?"
"No; he bade me think much of it before I did so, as you are concerned. And he said that you might perhaps be disappointed."