"Nonsense! Nonsense!"
"Pardon me, Sir Joseph, but it is not nonsense. I have accompanied you here to witness a family reconciliation, and to show Mrs. Shawe that I am not an undesirable relative. But I have come down with you alone in the hope that Mrs. Shawe would be present. As she is not, I doubt the propriety of remaining here. In my profession one cannot be too careful. What is to be done?"
"We can wait here until Audrey and her confounded husband return at eight o'clock. Then everything will be all right."
"Mrs. Shawe may miss the train."
"Well, well," said Branwin, impatiently, "there is another at eight o'clock from London, which gets here at ten."
"At that hour it would be too late for me to return," Miss Pearl reflected. "I shall wait for the eight o'clock train, and if Mrs. Shawe does not return I shall go back to London by the nine o'clock."
"Oh! I thought you were going to remain here for the night?"
"If Mrs. Shawe were here I should not do otherwise. What can you be thinking of, Sir Joseph, to suggest such a thing. Even the fact that your portmanteau and my trunk have arrived together, as we have, is a reflection on my character, now that we have learnt the absence of Mrs. Shawe. However, I shall put the matter right. Permit me."
Then Miss Pearl sought out the landlady, and pointed out with many words that she had come to Weed-on-the-Sands as the guest of Mrs. Shawe, along with Mrs. Shawe's father. As Mrs. Shawe was not in the hotel, Miss Pearl expressed her determination to return to London by the nine o'clock train if the young lady did not come back with her husband. "Therefore," ended the dancer, with an excessively virtuous air, "you will be pleased to see that my trunk is taken to the railway station if by eight o'clock my friend does not come."
The landlady quite understood, and promised to comply with the request, so Miss Pearl, having defended her character, graciously consented to partake of dinner: in the company of Sir Joseph at six o'clock. As the pair had arrived somewhat late in the afternoon the meal was served almost immediately, and during its preparation Miss Pearl chatted on select subjects with her companion. When the dinner was over and they had indulged in coffee, Sir Joseph proposed that Miss Pearl should accompany him for a stroll on the smooth sands.