In the nursery Mrs. Holdfast gave Fanny a letter, with instructions to deliver it to the gentleman in person, and to wait for an answer.
My dear, this letter was addressed “Mr. Pelham, 147, Buckingham Palace Road.”
Here at once is established the fact of the continuance of the intimacy between Mr. Pelham and Mrs. Holdfast. Is it possible that your father, after you left the country, discovered that his wife was deceiving him, and flew from the shame of her presence? It must be so. What, then, took place between husband and wife, and to whose advantage would it be that he should be made to disappear? I shudder to contemplate the answer. I can find but one; it is horrible to think of.
Fanny received the letter without remark, and went to the address in Buckingham Palace Road. Mr. Pelham was in, and Fanny was desired to walk up-stairs. There, in a handsomely-furnished room, she saw Mr. Pelham, lounging on a sofa, smoking and drinking. “A regular swell,” said Fanny. He tore the letter open, and tossed it away passionately, without reading it.
“You haven’t taken anything out of it?” he cried to Fanny.
“Oh, no, sir,” replied Fanny, “it’s just as Mrs. Holdfast gave it to me. I was to wait for an answer.”
Fanny says he looked as savage as if he had expected to find the envelope full of money, and didn’t find a penny. He drew the letter to him and read it; then rose, and took some paper from a desk, scribbled an answer, which he put carelessly into an envelope and threw over to Fanny, saying, “Give her that!” Fanny states that he is not an agreeable-looking gentleman, and that there is something about him that reminds her of —— but here Fanny stopped, and would not finish what she intended to say. She roused my curiosity, but she would not satisfy it.
“Wait a bit,” she said. “I’ve got an idea in my head. If it’s a right one I shall astonish you. If it ain’t, it would be foolish to speak about it.”
I could get nothing more than this out of her, and I let the subject drop, but there is evidently something very weighty on her mind.