Full of his impressions of her tale, he sat down to write to her on the third day after his return to town. He treated the matter of the novel very guardedly indeed; spoke well of it, warned her not to be too hopeful, remarked that her hero, while not unheroic, was very unlike a real man. Thus Bayre thought he would put her off the scent of his own intuition that the hero was meant for his own portrait. He added that he did not despair of selling the work, and that he would set about it at once. But she must not expect to set up a carriage out of the proceeds.
And then he turned to graver matters. Suspecting her complicity in the abduction of his infant cousin, and resenting her want of confidence in him over the matter, he said nothing about the child and nothing about Miss Merriman. But he told of his discovery of the broken iron box and its contents, and of the will which his uncle had made eight months previously. He asked her advice as to whether he should send these papers to her for his uncle, or to Mr Bayre’s solicitors. Perhaps she, he said, was in a better position than he to decide whether old Mr Bayre was in a fit state to be troubled with matters of business. For he reminded her that the old gentleman was evidently suffering from weakness of memory, as he had professed to have no remembrance whatever of the iron box.
He did not deny that he had read enough of the will to learn, to his surprise, how differently his uncle had thought of him a few months before, but he admitted that the document could have none but a sentimental interest now.
“If only,” went on poor Bayre, “he had continued in the same mind towards me, perhaps some day I might have been able to offer you something better than love in a villa one-brick-thick. However, I don’t mean to give up hope. Heaven keep you out of the way of another Monsieur Blaise! Remember, you have promised to write. So keep your promise unless you want me to throw up my berth here and come over again to find out why you don’t.—Yours,
“Bartlett Bayre.”
He was finishing this letter in his own room, by the light of a couple of inferior candles, when there came a thump at the door, and without waiting for permission Southerley put his head in.
“Hallo, what’s up?” asked Bayre, perceiving that the usually somewhat phlegmatic red face of the stalwart pressman was the colour of whitey-brown paper, and that his eyes had an unusual look.
“May I come in?” asked Southerley, hoarsely, when he was well inside and had shut the door carefully behind him. “I want to ask you something.” Then his eyes fell on the letter, which Bayre was elaborately trying to hide with a transparent assumption of carelessness. “You’re writing letters, I see?”
Bayre tried to look as if he had forgotten the fact.
“Miss Eden?” went on Southerley in a mysterious voice.
“H’m,” nodded Bayre, shamefacedly.