"Ye gods and little fishes! No!" he ejaculated. "Do I look, Helen, like a churchwarden, or any one else who would find comfort in Turkey carpets? I, my dear child, am going to find rest unto my soul in my own way. I--I am going to the Grecian Archipelago!"
"My dear Ned!" she laughed, "don't be so ridiculous! What are you going to do? You look tired!"
"Tired!" he echoed, with a quaint hint of a break in his voice; "I should think I was tired! So would you be if you had to consort with--how is it Walt Whitman puts it?--'tinsmiths, locksmiths, and they who work with the hammer, cabmen and mothers of large families.' I know now how my uncle must have felt. Excuse me, Helen, but I am a little bit harassed. You don't know what I've had to do and haven't had to do over this business; but I've got through it without any one guessing I was the syndicate. However, since I've started you, I really am off to Athens to-night. Afraid I shan't have your company on the Oriental express--ah, Ramsay? Now, as I have to see Ted Cruttenden--who is just back, I hear, from Paris--before I start, I'll say good-bye."
"But will you catch the express?" asked Dr. Ramsay incredulously.
"I expect so. I have a special," replied Lord Blackborough carelessly.
They looked at each other after he had left the room.
"I hope he will take a rest," said Helen, still more anxiously. "I've never seen him look so--so curious--as if he were seeing visions----"
"He is a little fine-drawn," said the doctor shortly; "quiet will set him all right, I expect."
Meanwhile Ned in his motor was running close up to time-limit on his way to Ted's office. Even if he missed the express he was not going away without telling the latter that he had spoken to Aura, that she had refused him, but that--well! he had some reason for hoping she might change her mind. He would have written this had he been able to get Ted's address in Paris, but no one knew it at the office, or at any rate they professed not to know it. Ted, however, had returned that morning, and Ned had telephoned down to him warning him to expect a visit.
So there he was in his private room, looking just a little disturbed, just a little combative; yet the Paris visit had been successful beyond his hopes. So successful indeed, that there was a really magnificent diamond ring in his breast-pocket awaiting leisure for him to take it down to Cwmfaernog.