On the one hand there was the assurance of a well-known and clever woman of the world like Lady Jennings that Rachel Davison was a charming girl, clever, high-principled, and generous to her family, amazingly industrious and dutiful to her people, but amazingly proud as well.
And on the other hand there was the question of Lady Jennings as to “doubles,” which made him ask himself—what he had not dared ask her—whether she had herself fancied she met Rachel Davison in a strange disguise. And there was the old lady’s statement that Rachel, while at Brighton, never answered letters, and her evident anxiety for him to go down there and see for himself what the girl was doing.
Of course there was nothing so very amazing in this fact of the disguise, if disguise it was, which he fancied he had seen Rachel wearing. If, as he had supposed possible, she went about as a workgirl to collect information or knowledge for literary or artistic work, it might well be that she would not tell Lady Jennings all the details of what she did in the way of her professional career.
It seemed, indeed, as far as he could judge, as if this clever, independent young woman were rather a puzzle to her own friends, and as if they treated her with so much respect that they even condescended to allow her to keep her own secrets. But Gerard himself felt that he could not be thus content. Admiring Rachel Davison with an admiration which grew ever more perilous to his peace of mind as the mysterious circumstances connected with her made her more interesting, he felt that the one thing more important than anything else to him at that time was the solution of the mystery about her.
And within a few days he was at Brighton, with the especial object of finding out what he could about Rachel’s life while staying with her mother.
It was with a fast-beating heart and an uncomfortable feeling that he had not come in an honest capacity, but in the character of a spy, that Gerard rang the bell of the old-fashioned but substantial lodging-house on the Brighton sea-front, the address of which had been given him by Lady Jennings.
He asked the maid who opened the door whether Miss Davison was at home.
“No, sir, not Miss Davison; but Mrs. Davison is,” answered the servant at once.
Gerard decided at once to see Mrs. Davison and to find out something at least about the mother of the girl in whom he was so much interested. He had heard two different accounts of her; the one, from Rachel, implied that she was a woman of some character, deeply suffering from the change she had suffered in circumstances, and the other, from Rose Aldington, which was quite another kind of person.
He was shown into a sitting-room overlooking the parade, and there he found a lady not yet past middle age, with hair scarcely touched with gray, and so like her elder daughter that it was impossible to see the one without being reminded of the other.