And with a nod he went out of the room.
But when it came to the point of taking pen in hand and beginning that momentous letter to Miss Eden, Bayre found his courage fail him. And instead of expressing the idea of which he had spoken, he contented himself with giving her the bare details of the adventure with the baby, the loss of the letter which had been on the child, and the appearance on the scene of the opportune Miss Merriman. Then he ran out, posted his letter, which he had written in studiously careful terms, that she might not think he was presuming upon their short acquaintance, and went back to his room in a state of considerable suspense.
The suspense continued for days, and went on for a whole fortnight, for Miss Eden vouchsafed no reply.
In the meantime, however, neither Miss Merriman nor the other two young men appeared to take greatly to heart the unexpected continuation of the period of their guardianship of the miraculous baby. Every day these three good fathers, mindful of their responsibilities, called dutifully at the ground-floor sitting-room, where they interviewed the object of their solicitude, and expressed their gratitude to Miss Merriman in trifling gifts of flowers and bonbons, which she was reluctant to accept, but which, as they pointed out to her, she was bound to allow them to bring, since she refused to let them pay for the large quantities of bread-and-butter and sponge-cake, milk and beef-tea, which their protégé consumed.
So that the period of suspense proved entirely supportable to two out of the three young guardians, and it was only Bayre who chafed under it.
He pointed out that they could not allow Miss Merriman to burden herself indefinitely with the care of another person’s child, and grew so fervid in his conscientious scruples on this head that nothing would satisfy him but to get leave of absence again (not without difficulty and even perjury in a mitigated form) and to return to Guernsey with the avowed intention of solving the mystery of the child’s parentage, and with an unavowed intention which both Repton and Southerley had no difficulty in divining.
The weather had changed for the worse since his first journey to the islands. It blew a gale as he crossed, and the snow and sleet drove in his face as he persisted in remaining on deck, watching for the first glimpse of the rocky coast.
But the atmosphere was not clear enough for him to discern anything until the vessel was close to harbour, and the thin white covering to road and roof, cliff and steeple, made everything ghostly and dismal in the light of a grey March day.
Bayre went straight to Madame Nicolas’ house, and, as he had taken the precaution to telegraph, he found an appetising breakfast waiting for him.
Keeping Madame in conversation, all with one object in view, he began by questioning her on indifferent subjects, and gradually worked round to the one thing of which his heart and mind were full.