‘Did I ever refuse you anything, Nora? You shall have the letters, or anything else you set your heart on, only continue to be nice to me as you were in Malta.’
‘Then give them to me,’ she said in an earnest voice.
‘Why, you don’t imagine I carry them about with me in my waistcoat pocket, do you? I take much more care of them that. They are at my London diggings, safely locked away in my dispatch box.’
‘Oh, when shall you go back and fetch them?’ exclaimed the countess.
‘That is not very hospitable of you, Nora,’ said Mr Portland, ‘when I have not yet spent a day at Thistlemere! No, no, you mustn’t be quite so impatient as all that. You shall have the precious letters in good time, though why you cannot leave them where they have been for the last two years, beats me altogether.’
‘You know I asked for them back before you left Malta, and you wouldn’t give them to me,’ said Lady Ilfracombe, ‘and now it is much more important than it was then. I was a fool not to make my father insist on their return, but I was so dreadfully afraid that he would read them.’
‘Ah, that wouldn’t have done, would it?’ returned Mr Portland carelessly. ‘You had better leave them with me, Nora. I’m their best custodian. The perusal of them gives me pleasure, whilst on others it might have a contrary effect, eh?’
‘No, no, you have promised to return them to me, and you must keep your word,’ her ladyship was replying just as Mr Sterndale entered the room, and said,—
‘Lord Ilfracombe sends his apologies to you, my lady, but one of the horses requires his attention and he has strolled out to the stables, but he desired me to tell you that he will not be absent more than a few minutes.’
END OF VOL. I.