When George Dallas knew that his meeting with Clare Carruthers was imminent, he told his uncle one of the two circumstances of his life which he had hitherto concealed from him. As George expected, Mr. Felton received the communication with some seriousness. "A little while ago, George," he said, "this might have upset the new and good understanding happily established between Mr. Carruthers and yourself, but I am in hopes it will not do so now. I think the old gentleman's nature is fine and forgiving, when one gets beneath the crust, and I am not afraid now. The chance of seeing the young lady, not in his presence, for the first time--that would have been awkward and dangerous indeed--is most fortunate. You must make your peace with her in the first instance."
Enough of the old habit of trick and expedient still adhered to George, in his improved moral condition, to induce him to entertain a passing thought that perhaps the necessity for Mr. Carruthers knowing he had had any previous acquaintance with Clare, might never arise; if she did not see that he must be told, George need not feel himself bound to tell him. But he rejected the impulse after a very little while, and was ashamed of it. When, therefore, Mr. Felton had left George alone at Sir Thomas Boldero's house, he had done so with intention, and without any purpose of returning.
"Meet me at my rooms afterwards," he had said to George. "And tell Miss Carruthers I will take leave to call on her at Mrs. Stanhope's this afternoon." George agreed, premising that he must look in at the Mercury office first, but would then be at his uncle's service. Left alone, he had applied himself, in a condition of extreme mental discomposure, to thinking of what he should say to Clare, and how he should say it. He had almost arranged a satisfactory programme before she came; after--well, after, he did not speak or look in the least like what he had intended, and if any one had asked him for an account of their interview (which no one did, it was destined to be utterly forgotten and overwhelmed in the tide of events), he would have been quite incapable of satisfying the demand.
The interview lasted long, and when, at its close, George Dallas put Clare Carruthers into her cousin's carriage, her face was closely veiled, and the little hand which lingered in his had not yet done trembling. As he stood on the door-step and watched the carriage out of sight, the young man's face was pale and agitated, but full of deep and sacred happiness too. An expression of resolve and hope, of courage and power, was upon his features, such as they had never before worn. Had he recalled the resolution he had taken for the time when Clare Carruthers should know Paul Ward as George Dallas, and had he renewed it, with fresh heart and energy, not unaided now by circumstances, not frowned upon by fate, no longer friendless? However that may have been, he carried a humbled and grateful heart with him, and felt himself a widely different man as he entered the dingy precincts of the Mercury office, from what he had been the last time he had crossed that threshold.
Mr. Cunningham was "in," and not only could see George, but was particularly anxious to see him.
"I was just writing to you, old fellow," he said, leaving off shaking hands with George, and beginning to tear up a brief and scrawly manuscript on flimsy which lay before him. "You have come in time to save me trouble and fourpence sterling."
"Anything about the business I wrote to you about?" asked George.
"Just that, sir. Of course I attended to it at once, and put Tatlow on to it on your account. They're said to be cautious chaps, the detectives, and of course it wouldn't pay for them to be said to be anything else; but I'm hanged if I ever believed it before. You may talk of depth, but Tatlow's unfathomable. Has the job from yon, sir, per medium of your humble servant, and flatly declines to report progress to me; goes in for doing business only with the principal, and when he comes to me not a word can I get out of him, except that he must know the address of a certain individual named Paul Ward."
"Paul Ward?" exclaimed George.
"Yes, Paul Ward! Great, fun, isn't it, George? And I really could not resist the joke of quizzing the detective a little bit. I was immensely tickled at the idea of your employing the man, and his looking after you. So I told him I knew Mr. Dallas was acquainted with a gentleman of that name, and could give him all the information he required."