“Refused me!”
Harcutt looked at him for a moment in blank amazement.
“Who refused you—Mr. Sabin or his niece?”
“Both!”
“Did she—did Mr. Sabin know your position, did he understand that you are the future Earl of Deringham?”
“Without a doubt,” Wolfenden answered drily; “in fact Mr. Sabin seems to be pretty well up in my genealogy. He had met my father once, he told me.”
Harcutt, with the natural selfishness of a man engaged upon his favourite pursuit, quite forgot to sympathise with his friend. He thought only of the bearing of this strange happening upon his quest.
“This,” he remarked, “disposes once and for all of the suggestion that these people are ordinary adventurers.”
“If any one,” Wolfenden said, “was ever idiotic enough to entertain the possibility of such a thing. I may add that from the first I have had almost to thrust my acquaintance upon them, especially so far as Mr. Sabin is concerned. He has never asked me to call upon them here, or in London; and this morning when he found me with his niece he was quietly but furiously angry.”
“It is never worth while,” Harcutt said, “to reject a possibility until you have tested and proved it. What you say, however, settles this one. They are not adventurers in any sense of the word. Now, will you answer me a few questions? It may be just as much to your advantage as to mine to go into this matter.”