A week later Madame Guerin suggested that he should propose, but she warned him that the girl was suspicious of fortune-hunters and that he must prove to her that he was not a needy vagabond marrying to be kept.
He laughed at the notion, but he took it seriously all the same, and when Miss Northcliffe modestly and blushingly accepted his offer of marriage he impulsively asked to be tested as to his means.
But Miss Northcliffe preferred to leave that to her dear friend and guardian, Madame Guerin, and the latter thereupon suggested that he should realize a couple of thousand pounds and settle it right away on Miss Northcliffe, who was, of course, equally willing to supply evidence that her fortune was not a myth.
The infatuated man declined to doubt his fiancée for a moment, and the two thousand pounds were in the possession of Madame Guerin two days later. She received the money with a congratulatory smile, and told him to call again the following Sunday and fix the date for the wedding.
There were four days to Sunday, and how he passed them he never knew. Certainly he was a very inefficient public servant during that time, for his mind was concentrated on the beauty and fortune of the lovely English girl who was about to become his wife. When Sunday came round he was up at dawn, and two hours before he was due to start for Versailles he was hatted and gloved.
The Villa looked very inviting as he walked up to it and pulled the old-fashioned bell. A long pause ensued, and then the fat cook opened the door and breathlessly informed him that Madame was resting in her room but would be down in a few minutes. He expressed his regrets, but when he was in the drawing-room he began to feel that there was something wrong. The atmosphere depressed him, and he had to reprove himself audibly for being morbid to prevent a fit of pessimism overwhelming him.
He was staring through the window when Madame Guerin entered, very pale and dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. In great alarm he rushed to her side. What had happened? Where was Miss Northcliffe? Was she ill? A dozen questions tumbled over one another, and all the time the plump little widow tried to control her sobs.
"Oh, monsieur," she exclaimed, with a piteous expression, "how shall I break the news? I am distracted, desolate! Miss Northcliffe—she has gone—disappeared. I know not where. She may be kidnapped or she may have run away. I am too distracted to be able to think. It is all dreadful and—" A flood of tears completed the sentence.
In vain he implored her to tell him plainly what had happened. The result was that he left the Villa aware that he had lost his two thousand pounds and dimly suspicious of Madame Guerin, although she had sworn that Miss Northcliffe had taken away every penny of it, and, indeed, owed a goodly sum to her.
Further reflection convinced him that he had been swindled, and he began to think of appealing to the police, but at forty-five one does not do things in a hurry, and he was not the person to court ridicule. He had walked into the trap open-eyed, and if his colleagues in the Government service heard the story of the "English heiress" they would make his life a misery with their vulgar chaff. So beyond another visit to the Versailles Villa to inquire if Miss Northcliffe had returned he took no steps to recover his losses.