It seemed to satisfy him. He turned to the landlady, took out his pocket-book and pencil, as if to make a note of her answers, and asked, "Your name, Mrs.—"
"Jones, sir, at your service," she answered, curtseying.
"Mrs. Jones? ah!" He wrote down something in his pocket-book, then looked at her again: "Your rent?"
"Thirty shillin's hand hextras," she replied, audaciously clapping on ten shillings for the military appearance.
"Ah!" he answered once more, nothing else; no bargaining, as Mrs. Jones informed her next-door neighbor, nothing of the kind; he only shut up his pocket-book with a snap and turned aside, apparently quite satisfied. Mrs. Jones flattered herself that his satisfaction arose from prepossession with her rooms and her personal appearance. Quite other was the consideration that caused the prospective lodger such a pleasant glow of satisfaction.
Something indeed was written down in his note-book by that busy-looking pencil. It was not Mrs. Jones's name and address, nor even her exceedingly moderate terms.
If the solitary lady who was leaving London that day to hide her sorrow and loneliness could only have known what was written there, her satisfaction would have flown, for she had left her secret behind her, tacked in large letters to the boxes that were to follow her the next day, and the secret had been transferred to the pocket-book of the man she thought she had escaped.
Poor Adèle's diplomacy! It had given way at only one point, but unhappily that point was all important.