“He is Greek,” she said very stiffly.
“That might mean anything,” retorted Miss Graham sweepingly. “I tell you frankly that’s what I don’t like about the business—his being such a rum colour. I don’t trust black fellows.”
“You talk as though he were a nigger!” said Lydia, furious.
“I know what I’m talking about. I knew a girl once who took up with a fellow like that. He wasn’t a bit darker than your Margoliouth, and he talked awfully good English, and she got herself engaged to him. He said he was a prince, and frightfully rich, and he gave her all sorts of presents, and when he had to go back to his own country he sent her the money for her passage so she could come out next year and get married to him. Well, she got everything ready—heaps of clothes and things—and was always talking of how she was going to be a princess, and he’d promised to meet her at a place called Port Said with his own carriage and horses and all the rest of it. Some of us thought she was taking a bit of a risk, but she didn’t care a scrap, and was just wild to get out there. Well, off she went—and we didn’t hear anything more about her, or get any of the letters and photographs and things she’d promised to send. And then three months later, I met her in the City, where I was matching silks for old Peroxide, and she’d sneaked back to her old firm and got them to take her back as typist again.”
“But what had happened?”
“She didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask her. But she told another girl, and I heard about it afterwards. She’d gone off on the ship all right, with all her fine new luggage and the rest of it, and she’d told all the people on board who she was going out to marry, and most of them said what a fool she was, and it would be an awful life for an English girl, and she’d never be allowed to come home again. But there was one man on board—a parson—who simply wouldn’t let her alone about it, and said she didn’t know what she was doing, and at last he got her to promise that she wouldn’t actually marry this chap until he’d made inquiries about him. And he did the minute they arrived—although the fellow was there just as he’d said, with a great carriage and two horses, to take her away. I don’t exactly know what happened, but this clergyman fellow went straight off to some British Consul or someone, and they found out all about the man straight away. He was a sort of prince all right, and quite as rich as he’d said—though he didn’t live in a palace, but some place right away from everywhere—but he wasn’t a Christian—and he’d got two native wives already.”
“Oh!” Lydia gasped involuntarily at the climax of the narrative, which came upon her inexperience as a complete shock.
“So that was the end of that, as you can imagine,” said Miss Graham. “The clergyman was awfully good to her, and paid her passage home again out of his own pocket, because she hadn’t got a sixpence. Poor kid, she was fearfully cut up, though as a matter of fact she ought to have been off her head with thankfulness that she got stopped in time. I don’t suppose she’d ever have got away again, once he’d taken her off in his carriage and pair.”
“It must have been awful for her, going back to her old job, after leaving it to get married like that,” said Lydia. She thought with horror of the humiliation that it would mean for the victim to return, in such circumstances, to those who had doubtless heard her triumphant boasts of emancipation on leaving.
“D’you think that would be the worst of it?” queried Miss Graham sharply.