For a long time they sat in that room, talking of the matter, Nadia feeling doubts concerning the best thing to be done. Finally she exclaimed:
“If the friends we met in London were here they could advise us. I would feel safer, too. It might have been better had we remained in Edinburgh. It’s lonely here in the country, and I fear what may happen.”
The afternoon wore away. Night was at hand when both were startled by the sound of hoofs and wheels outside.
With her heart fluttering in her bosom, Nadia sprang up and rushed to the front window. A closed carriage had stopped before the door. Budthorne joined his sister at the window.
The carriage door opened and from it sprang two boys, followed more leisurely by a man past middle age.
A cry of delight burst from Nadia.
“Our friends have come at last!” she joyously exclaimed.
[CHAPTER VI.—BUNOL’S PLOT.]
The man who had said he was Henri Clairvaux, of Paris, was in truth Miguel Bunol, a scheming and villainous young Spaniard.
Bunol had first met Luke Durbin on the race track in New Orleans, and, being congenial rascals, they became very well acquainted. But Durbin was a rather slow, thick-witted rascal, while Bunol was quick, pantherish and full of crooked schemes.