Then leaving only the key of the front door with “the boy,” the pair left the house and hurried to the station, where they were just in time to buy their tickets and jump into a second-class carriage. And before John Legg had time to recover his routed and dispersed mental faculties they were whirled halfway to London.
“You are the most energetic woman I ever saw in my life, Julia!” he said, trying to understand the situation.
“Need to be when there is a brown answer fortune, and a silver kingdom, if not a gold one, in the question—yes, and a dear, dying uncle, too!”
“I wonder if the boy will remember to take that celery to the vicarage when the market gardener brings it this afternoon?”
“Oh, bother the celery, and the vicar, too! Think of the silver and gold kingdom—and—yes, of course, the poor, dear, dying uncle!” said Julia. And onward they flew northward toward Yorkshire, unconscious that they were destined to take a part in a very memorable drama to be enacted at Haymore Hall.
The other scene connected with the same drama, and which the clairvoyant might have looked in upon, was the elegant private parlor at Langham’s Hotel, where the counterfeit Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay and the Rev. Mr. Cassius Leegh sat at an early breakfast.
The personal appearance of Gentleman Geff and his “lady” are familiar to our readers. That of the Rev. Cassius Leegh may be described. He resembled his sister. Nature had given him a very handsome form and face, but sin had marred both.
On this morning both men looked bad; their faces were pallid, their eyes red, their hands shaky, their voices husky, their nerves “shattered,” their tempers—infernal!
Gentleman Geff had plunged into the gulf of dissipation to drown remorse. And the last two months of lawless deviltry in the French capital had made of him a mental and physical wreck.
His “reverend” brother-in-law was not far above him in the path that leads down to perdition.