“Dear Lord Wolfenden,—Of course I made a mistake in coming to you last night. I am very sorry indeed—more sorry than you will ever know. A woman does not forget these things readily, and the lesson you have taught me it will not be difficult for me to remember all my life. I cannot consent to remain your debtor, and I am leaving here at once. I shall have gone long before you receive this note. Do not try to find me. I shall not want for friends if I choose to seek them. Apart from this, I do not want to see you again. I mean it, and I trust to your honour to respect my wishes. I think that I may at least ask you to grant me this for the sake of those days at Deringham, which it is now my fervent wish to utterly forget.—I am, yours sincerely,
“Blanche Merton.”
“The young lady, my lord,” Selby remarked, “left early this morning. She expressed herself as altogether satisfied with the attention she had received, but she had decided to make other arrangements.”
Wolfenden nodded, and walked into his dining-room with the note crushed up in his hand.
“For the sake of those days at Deringham,” he repeated softly to himself. Was the girl a fool, or only an adventuress? It was true that there had been something like a very mild flirtation between them at Deringham, but it had been altogether harmless, and certainly more of her seeking than his. They had met in the grounds once or twice and walked together; he had talked to her a little after dinner, feeling a certain sympathy for her isolation, and perhaps a little admiration for her undoubted prettiness; yet all the time he had had a slightly uneasy feeling with regard to her. Her ingenuousness had become a matter of doubt to him. It was so now more than ever, yet he could not understand her going away like this and the tone of her note. So far as he was concerned, it was the most satisfactory thing that could have happened. It relieved him of a responsibility which he scarcely knew how to deal with. In the face of her dismissal from Deringham, any assistance which she might have accepted from him would naturally have been open to misapprehension. But that she should have gone away and have written to him in such a strain was directly contrary to his anticipations. Unless she was really hurt and disappointed by his reception of her, he could not see what she had to gain by it. He was puzzled a little, but his thoughts were too deeply engrossed elsewhere for him to take her disappearance very seriously. By the time he had finished lunch he had come to the conclusion that what had happened was for the best, and that he would take her at her word.
He left his rooms again about three o’clock, and at precisely the hour at which Densham had rung the bell of Mrs. Thorpe-Satchell’s house in Mayfair he experienced a very great piece of good fortune.
Coming out of Scott’s, where more from habit than necessity he had turned in to have his hat ironed, he came face to face, a few yards up Bond Street, with the two people whom, more than any one else in the world, he had desired to meet. They were walking together, the girl talking, the man listening with an air of half-amused deference. Suddenly she broke off and welcomed Wolfenden with a delightful smile of recognition. The man looked up quickly. Wolfenden was standing before them on the pavement, hat in hand, his pleasure at this unexpected meeting very plainly evidenced in his face. Mr. Sabin’s greeting, if devoid of any special cordiality, was courteous and even genial. Wolfenden never quite knew whence he got the impression, which certainly came to him with all the strength and absoluteness of an original inspiration, that this encounter was not altogether pleasant to him.
“How strange that we should meet you!” the girl said. “Do you know that this is the first walk that I have ever had in London?”