“Can you tell me whether a lady of the name of Marlowe sailed by the Orion, for Melbourne?” he began, with suppressed eagerness.
The clerk eyed him with the charming impassibility and indifference which distinguishes some of his class, and read a letter which lay before him before answering.
“You will find her name in the passenger list if she did,” he said at last.
“Then, for Heaven’s sake, give me the passenger list!” said Lord Cecil, with suppressed fury. “I have been waiting——” He pulled himself up on the verge of an outbreak, and the clerk, with a great deal of dignity, got down a huge ledger and leisurely found the proper page. Then he proceeded to read off the names; there seemed a million of them to poor Cecil, who leaned against the counter, his eyes fixed on the book, his lips tightly compressed.
“Mr. and Mrs. Browne, Mr. and Miss Tompkins, Mr. Garland, Miss Doris Marlowe. Yes, she sailed,” said the clerk.
Lord Cecil gripped the counter hard, and stared in a dazed, blind way at the open page.
“Mr. Garland! Miss Doris Marlowe!” Great Heaven, then the marquis had spoken the truth, and she had jilted him; had left him for the other man—this actor. In a moment he recalled the young fellow, the handsome Romeo, who had played so well to her Juliet. And she had gone with him! She—Doris! Doris, the girl he loved; whose faith, and honor, and truth—-ah, and innocent purity of mind and soul—he would have sworn by.
The clerk stared at his white face and compressed lips curiously. It was not the first time anxious inquiries had been made respecting missing persons at the office, but no one had taken the information given as this handsome young gentleman took it. He seemed, as the clerk put it afterward, when recounting the incident to his fellow-clerks, “as if he were struck dumb, and deaf, and blind.”
“Is there anything else I can tell you, sir?” he asked.
Lord Cecil raised his head and regarded him vacantly.