She continued the conversation without feeling the slightest interest in it, but simply because it was an escape—a temporary escape—from her thoughts. "What did you come over for?" she asked.
"A fool's errand!" he answered. "I lent a man some money—a sort of speculation it was—and I came over to see how he was getting on."
"And I suppose he'd lost it," she remarked.
"He's lost himself," answered the man, "which is about as bad. I wish I could lay my hands upon him. I'd get a bit of my own back, one way or another."
"London is a big place," she returned. "People are not easy to find unless you know all about them."
"This man left South Africa only a month or so ago. He gave me an address here where he said I should always hear of him. I've been there nearly every day. He turned up there all right regularly after he first landed. He hasn't been there at all for two months, and they haven't the least idea where he is."
"You don't even know," she asked, "whether the speculation is successful or not?"
He shook his head gloomily. "It don't make much odds, so far as I can see," he said. "If it came off, he's bolted with the profits. If it didn't, he's hiding for fear I shall want my money back again. It's a rotten sort of show, anyway."
"What was his name?" she asked idly.
"His real name," the man answered, "was the same as your own,—that is," he added, "I think I heard old Mrs. Towsley call you Miss Sinclair, didn't I?"