In the mean time, while Lady Anne Mellent was acting as we have seen in the most remote part of Northumberland, two series of operations were going forward in London, with which it is necessary the reader should be acquainted; but, like the long-eared animal between the two bundles of hay, I am sorely puzzled which to go on with first. We left Lady Fleetwood just ready to go out, after having dismissed Mr. Mingy Bowes. We left Mr. Mingy Bowes just entering the room where Carlo Carlini and the pedlar sat, with a look of surprise upon his countenance.
Which would the reader like to go on with? Let us toss up. If the luck should be against the reader's inclination, he has nothing to do but invert the order of this and the following chapter. Now, then--heads or tails? Lady Fleetwood wins the day!
After Mingy Bowes had taken his departure, the excellent lady sat for a moment or two to recover breath and composure; for both were in a somewhat exhausted state, at the end of her conversation with the respectable person who had just left her. She then rose, rang the bell, and walked out, taking her way direct towards the house of Mr. Scriven. As she went, indeed, she became a good deal agitated. She had previously made up her mind to act most diplomatically with her brother, had arranged all her plans, was fully convinced that she comprehended every particular of Maria's situation, and saw through all her secrets; but her conversation with Mr. Mingy Bowes had shaken and confused all her thoughts, views, and purposes, so that she could lay her hand upon nothing; and when she did find the skein of thought, it was so tangled and twisted that she could not unravel it for the life of her.
In these circumstances it would have been only wise to have gone back quietly to her own house, and left matters exactly as they were, without meddling with them at all: but, as I have shown, the demon of activity was upon her, and spurred her on to help her friends and relations, against their will. So, forward she was carried upon her way, by the power of the locomotive within, till she reached Mr. Scriven's door, and John rapped loud and strong. Then, indeed, she would have given her ears to have got away, or to have found that her brother was out.
No such good fortune awaited her. The door was opened almost immediately; Mr. Scriven was at home, and she was shown up to his drawing-room. He had got three printed papers before him, the London "Gazette," the "Shipping List," and another, I don't know what, besides a little scrap of white paper, not bigger than my hand--for Mr. Scriven was very careful of his paper--on which he was jotting down various cabalistic signs and a number of figures, which nobody in Europe could have made anything of but himself. The result did not seem satisfactory to him, however, for his face was certainly gloomy; and, pointing with the butt-end of his pencil to a chair, he uttered the laconic and incomplete sentence, "In a minute," and then went on with his calculations again.
Lady Fleetwood sat down; and perhaps no worse mode of torture could have been devised by Mr. Scriven than that of making her wait in silence; for she did not employ the interval calmly and orderly, in thinking what she had best do, but suffered pros and cons, and the recollections of everything that had taken place between Maria and herself, and Mr. Bowes and herself, and all the deductions she had formerly drawn, and all the doubts which had since sprung up, and a great many other considerations besides, to settle down upon her like a swarm of bees, and sting her till she was half mad with the irritation.
Her mind was in a very swollen and inflamed state when Mr. Scriven stopped, folded up the paper, and put it in his waistcoat pocket, drew in the nose of his pencil, like the head of a tortoise into its shell, and then, looking straight at Lady Fleetwood, said--
"Well, Margaret, what do you want? I could not come at eleven, for, as you see, I had something else to do; but I suppose your business is important, or you would not hunt me down here."
His uncivil speech gave Lady Fleetwood an opportunity of escape, if she had had wit enough to avail herself of it: and indeed she did make an effort, though it was not a very successful one.
"Oh, I don't want to disturb you at all," she said; "I did not know you were particularly engaged."