He did not even, so he told himself, think the matter worth a second thought. But he went on thinking of nothing else, and hurried away to his rooms in Buckingham Street, oppressed by a sensation of discomfort and depression, such as he could not remember having ever experienced before.
He stopped short suddenly as he was walking quickly along and tried to remember what the man was like to whom he had seen her hand the glittering object.
But the whole episode had passed so swiftly, his own attention had been so completely absorbed in the girl herself and in what she was doing, that he had had no time or attention left for the man. He remembered vaguely that the man’s back was turned to him, that he was tall and broad-shouldered and that he wore a dark overcoat, but he could recall no more details, try as he would.
The man, too, appeared to have been an expert at rapid disappearance, for when Gerard had turned to look for him he was gone.
Supposing that Miss Davison, being a designer and therefore an artist, had been in the habit of disguising herself in order to be able to move about freely, and to see more of the world and of life than she could in her own proper person. Surely there was a possibility of that! There had been instances before of great artists passing themselves off as people of a lower station, in order to gain information. And, now he thought of it, it seemed to him highly probable, and not merely possible, that this high-spirited and clever woman, always active and on the alert for the means to make money for her family as well as for herself, should make a practice of disguising herself in the dress of a poor working-girl, in order the more readily to pass without attracting comment among the crowds of London, and perhaps even to collect facts which she could dress up into attractive press articles, or into book shape, with the object of earning a larger income.
The more he considered the matter, the more reasonable this idea seemed. Her sister had said that she was a designer. Was it not more than probable that that was what Rachel called herself, and that her real occupation was that of a journalist, one of which her old-fashioned mother would probably have disapproved if she had been told of it.
The little story grew in his mind until it seemed the likeliest thing in the world. Rachel, anxious for something to do, aware of her singular cleverness in gliding about without attracting too much attention, had availed herself of the only means at her disposal of earning a good income, by becoming a journalist; and, in order to get the sort of first-hand knowledge of life necessary for her purpose, she habitually went about disguised as a girl of the poorer classes. Because she knew her mother would be distressed if she were to know what profession her daughter followed, Rachel had given out that she was an artist and designer, and so got the time she wanted to herself, and represented herself as having a studio near Regent Street, in order to account for the hours when she was occupied collecting information for the editors who employed her.
The longer he lingered upon this hypothesis, the more he liked it; but in spite of his arguments, there lingered at the bottom of his mind a vague fear that his little story was but a fiction after all.
For what of the glittering thing he had seen her pass to the man?
And what of the man?