Gray knew. He had had the shrewdness to follow the great Caroli, and he discovered that some of the pious gentlemen were not so pious as they seemed. Having got that far, he was able to make a bargain with Caroli in order to keep the facts to himself.
Of course the magnificent array of goods for the country mansion went back to their shelves. Caroli did not appear again.
Although his great desire was to meet the foreign gentleman once more and settle accounts with him, George Early chose the wiser course of putting himself under the chaperonage of his wife or her aunt, when away from home, in order to combat any further attacks.
And Aunt Phœbe performed her duty nobly. So nobly that George Early's enemies would have to wait until her vigil was relaxed. They did wait—and when the time came, made the most of it.
One afternoon Aunt Phœbe entered her niece's room in a great state of vexation. Something alarming had occurred. You could tell that by the way she flounced in, jerking her head sharply, and giving little emphatic thumps at nothing with her clenched hands. George, who followed her, sat in a dazed way on the first chair he came to.
Mrs. Early feared the worst, and her fears were realized.
"Bless you, I can't say how it happened," said Aunt Phœbe, her indignation almost depriving her of speech. "We were coming home in a hansom cab, and drove Oxford Street way as I had to make a call about some gloves. I wasn't away a quarter of an hour, I should think, but when I came back he was gone. Gone—wafted away."
"Gone?" echoed her niece.
"Missing," said Aunt Phœbe, with a wave of her hand. "I found him standing on the pavement a little later trying to recollect who he was. All he seems to know of it is that a mysterious man told him I had been taken ill, and was carried into a wine-shop. A wine-shop, of all places! Instead of me he found there the foreign person. What happened, goodness only knows, except that he's been drinking!"
Mrs. Early clasped her hands and gazed tearfully at her husband, who sat looking in a forlorn way at the carpet.