"Yes," said Blair; "very well," and he strode out of the room.
Austin Ambrose sat and listened to the firm, decided step as it died away on the stairs, then he rose and paced the room with slow and measured tread, his hard, cold face set like stone.
"It's risky!" he muttered at last. "It may fail, and then——But it will not fail! Blair is easy enough to manage, and the girl—well, she is like the rest, I suppose and, Heaven knows, they are easy enough to deceive! I'll chance it!"
He sat down and remained in thought for another quarter of an hour, then he rose, and putting a light overcoat over his dress clothes, he took his hat and went out.
Passing up one of the small streets, he reached a short row of houses, quiet, miniature boxes of residences, called Anglesea Terrace, and knocking at No. 9, inquired if Miss Belvoir were at home.
Before the maidservant could reply, a feminine voice called out through the open door in the narrow passage:
"Yes, she is. Is that you, Mr. Ambrose? Come in," and Austin Ambrose, passing through the little passage, which was lined with large photographs of Miss Belvoir in various costumes, entered the room from which the voice proceeded.
The room was a very small one—far too small to permit of that oft-mentioned performance—swinging a cat—and it was rather shabbily, though gaudily furnished. The furniture was old and palpably rickety, the carpet was threadbare, but there was a brilliant wall paper, and a pair of gay-colored cushions. An opera cloak, lined with scarlet, lay on one of the chairs, and on the sofa were a hat and a pair of sixteen-button kid gloves.
The owner of the hat, opera cloak, and gloves, sat at the table "discussing," as the old authors say, a lobster and a bottle of stout.
She was a girl of about two-and-twenty, neither pretty nor plain, but with a sharp, intelligent face—the sort of face one sees amongst the London street boys—and a pair of dark and wide-awake eyes, which were by far her best features. She wore a light-blue dressing grown—rather frayed at the sleeves, by the way, and trimmed with a cheap and—by no means slightly—dirty lace. But for all its sharpness and the vulgarity of its surroundings, it was not altogether a bad face.