For a moment she drew away and looked at him doubtfully.
"On business at half-past eleven?" she repeated. "What is your business? Are you an honest man, Ed. Levy, eh?"
"I am as honest as your grandfather," he answered, "and listen, I am clever. I can make money—make it quickly."
She sat a little closer to him and with her own fingers drew his arm around her waist.
"Shall we be married soon?" she whispered. "Grandfather must die some day soon, and there's no one knows how much money he's got. David and I will have it all."
"We'll talk about that," Harvey Grimm promised.
At a few minutes after twelve on the following morning, Harvey Grimm, very spruce and very debonair, pushed open the swing-doors of the small smoking-room of the Milan, and crossed the room with the obvious intention of proceeding towards the bar. A little welcoming chorus assailed him from a circular lounge in the right-hand corner of the room. Seated there were four of his friends whom at first he scarcely recognised. There was Aaron Rodd with his arm in a sling, a piece of sticking-plaster on his forehead and a thick stick by his side; the poet, with a bandaged head and a shade over his eye; Henriette, looking a little fragile but very animated; and her brother, still in uniform, leaning back in an easy chair by her side. Harvey Grimm stared at them all in blank and ever-increasing astonishment.
"Has there been an earthquake?" he asked, as he shook hands and exchanged greetings with everybody, "or have I, in my country seclusion, missed a scrap?"
"You have missed the scrap of your life," Cresswell replied eagerly. "You have saved your skin at the expense of untold glory."
"Tell me about it," the new-comer begged, as he took his place in the little circle.