“Not that I know of,” said Bayre, quietly.
“What did she want you for?” growled Southerley in a dictatorial tone.
“Oh, to ask if I had found out anything about the child, of course.”
“And have you?”
“I think so. It’s my uncle’s child, and my first cousin, I have every reason to believe.”
“Then,” cried Repton, springing up in the delight of an interesting discovery, “we’ve only got to wring its neck for you and you’ll be heir to all the old gentleman’s property!”
“I don’t know so much about that,” said Bayre, laughing. “At the same time I’m awfully grateful to you for the suggestion that you’re so ready to oblige me.”
“Oh, well,” said Repton, “it cuts two ways, you know. Of course you’d have to keep Southerley and me out of the proceeds, and handsomely too. I’d let you off with a yacht and a cottage at Deal. But I don’t know what Southerley might want; a house in Park Lane, perhaps, to live in when he’d married Miss Merriman.”
“Hold your tongue, you fool!” said Southerley, in a deep bass voice.
“Well,” said Repton, “I know you won’t be satisfied unless you do marry her. I never saw any fellow so gone on any woman as you are on her. The way the conversation finds its way round to Miss Merriman every ten minutes, even if it starts at the differential calculus—(it never does, by-the-bye, and I haven’t the remotest idea what the differential calculus is)—is perfectly sickening.”