'It isn't as if I needed to talk to him either,' he persisted. 'I've a friend of my own to see off, that's why I'm here at this time (Liverpool he's goin' to),' he added, with some obscure sense of superiority implied in this fact; 'and let me tell you, he's a man that's looked up to by every one there, is Budkin, and'll be mayor before he dies! And another thing let me say to you, Mark. In the course of my life I've picked up, 'ere and there, some slight knowledge of human character, and I read faces as easy as print. Now I don't like the look of that friend of yours.'
'Do you mean Caffyn?' asked Mark.
'I don't know him; no, I mean that down-lookin' chap you introduced to me—'Olroyd, isn't it? Well, don't you have too much to do with him—there's something in his eye I don't fancy; he ain't to be trusted, and you mind what I say.'
'Well,' said Mark, 'I can promise you that I shall see no more of him than I can help in future, if that's any relief to your mind.'
'You stick to that then, and—'ullo, there is Budkin come at last! You come along with me and I'll introduce you (he's not what you call a refined sort of feller, yer know,' he explained forbearingly, 'but still we've always been friends in a way); you can't stop? Must go back to Miss Mabel, hey? Well, well, I won't keep yer; good-bye till the day after to-morrow then, and don't you forgit what you'd 'a been if you'd been thrown on the world without an uncle—there'd be no pretty Miss Mabel for you then, whatever you may think about it, young chap!'
When Mark made his appearance at Kensington Park Gardens again, Dolly watched his face anxiously, longing to ask if Vincent had really gone at last, but somehow she was afraid. And so, as the time went by, and no Vincent Holroyd came to the door to denounce her, she took comfort and never knew how her fears were shared by her new brother-in-law.
CHAPTER XXXI.
AGAG.
AT a certain point between Basle and Schaffhausen, the Rhine, after winding in wide curves through low green meadows fringed with poplars, suddenly finds itself contracted to a narrow and precipitous channel, down which it foams with a continuous musical roar. On the rocks forming this channel, connected by a quaint old bridge, stand the twin towns, Gross and Klein Laufingen. Of the two there can be no question which has the superior dignity, for, while Klein Laufingen (which belongs to Baden) is all comprised in a single narrow street ending in a massive gatehouse, Gross Laufingen, which stands in Swiss territory, boasts at least two streets and a half, besides the advantages of a public platz that can scarcely be smaller than an average London back garden, a church with a handsome cupola and blue and gold-faced clock, and the ruins of what was once an Austrian stronghold crowning the hill around which the roofs are clustered, with a withered tree on the ragged top of its solitary tall grey tower. Gross Laufingen has seen more stirring times than at present: it was a thriving post town once, a halting-place for all the diligences. Napoleon passed through it, too, on his way to Moscow, and on the roof of an old tower outside the gate is still to be seen a grotesque metal profile, riddled with the bullets of French conscripts, who made a target of it in sport or insult, when a halt was called. Now the place is sleepy and quiet enough: there are no diligences to rattle and lumber over the stones, and the most warlike spectacle there is provided by the Swiss militiamen as they march in periodically from the neighbouring villages to have their arms inspected, singing choruses all the way. There is a railway, it is true, on the Klein Laufingen bank, but a railway where the little station and mouth of the tunnel have been so ornamentally treated that at a slight distance a train coming in irresistibly suggests one of those working models set in motion by either a dropped penny or the fraudulent action of the human breath, as conscience permits. So innocent an affair is powerless to corrupt Laufingen, and has brought as yet but few foreigners to its gates. English, Russian, and American tourists may perhaps exclaim admiringly as the trains stop, affording a momentary view of the little town grouped compactly on the rocks with the blue-green cataract rushing by—but they are bound for Schaffhausen or the Black Forest or Constance, and cannot break the journey—so the hosts of personally conducted ones pass Laufingen by, and Laufingen seems upon the whole resigned to its obscurity. But Mark Ashburn, at least, had felt its gentle attractions, having come upon it almost by accident, as he returned alone from the Black Forest after the tour with Caffyn. His thoughts were constantly of Mabel Langton at that time, and he found a dreamy pleasure in the idea of coming to Laufingen some day when she should be his companion, which made him look upon everything he saw merely as a background for her fair face. It had seemed a very hopeless dream then, and yet a few months more and the dream had come to pass. He was at Laufingen once again, and Mabel was by his side.