And after the store was closed that evening, Mr. Hobbs and Dick sat in the back room and talked together until midnight.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE EXPOSURE.
It is astonishing how short a time it takes for very wonderful things to happen. It had taken only a few minutes, apparently, to change all the fortunes of the little boy dangling his red legs from the high stool in Mr. Hobbs’s store, and to transform him from a small boy, living the simplest life in a quiet street, into an English nobleman, the heir to an earldom and magnificent wealth. It had taken only a few minutes, apparently, to change him from an English nobleman into a penniless little impostor, with no right to any of the splendours he had been enjoying. And, surprising as it may appear, it did not take nearly so long a time as one might have expected to alter the face of everything again and to give back to him all that he had been in danger of losing.
It took the less time because, after all, the woman who had called herself Lady Fauntleroy was not nearly so clever as she was wicked; and when she had been closely pressed by Mr. Havisham’s questions about her marriage and her boy, she had made one or two blunders which had caused suspicion to be awakened; and then she had lost her presence of mind and her temper, and in her excitement and anger had betrayed herself still further. There seemed no doubt that she had been married to Bevis, Lord Fauntleroy, but Mr. Havisham found out that her story of the boy’s being born in a certain part of London was false; and just when they all were in the midst of the commotion caused by this discovery, there came the letter from the young lawyer in New York, and Mr. Hobbs’s letters also.
What an evening it was when those letters arrived, and when Mr. Havisham and the Earl sat and talked their plans over in the library!
“After my first three meetings with her,” said Mr. Havisham, “I began to suspect her strongly. Our best plan will be [to cable] at once for these two Tiptons, say nothing about them to her, and suddenly confront her with them when she is not expecting it. My opinion is that she will betray herself on the spot.”
And that was what actually happened. She was told nothing, but one fine morning, as she sat in her sitting-room at the inn called “The Dorincourt Arms,” making some very fine plans for herself, Mr. Havisham was announced; and when he entered, he was followed by no leas than three persons—one was a [sharp-faced] boy and one was a big young man, and the third was the Earl of Dorincourt.
She sprang to her feet and actually uttered a cry of terror. She had thought of these new-comers as being thousands of miles away, when she had ever thought of them at all, which she had scarcely done for years. She had never expected to see them again. It must be confessed that Dick grinned a little when he saw her.
“Hello, Minna!” he said,
The big young man—who was Ben—stood still a minute and looked at her.