"I think I must leave you sooner than I had intended," I said; "I should like to be in England to see how things are going on."
"You are right," answered Ralph, "though I shall be sorry to lose you. You have some influence with Livingstone, I know, though he is so hard to guide and self-reliant that advice is almost useless. If I had to give you a consigne, it would be—Distrust. If Miss Bellasys seems to take things pleasantly, be still more wary. I never saw a peculiarly frank, winning smile on her father's face without there being ruin to some one in the background. After all, you can do but little, I suppose. Che sara, sara." He said this drearily, and with something like a sigh.
I had some business which detained me in Dublin, and it was nearly a fortnight after I received Guy's letter before I reached London.
Early on the morning after my arrival I went down to his lodgings in Piccadilly. I found him at breakfast; after the first greetings, before I could say one word about his own affairs, he began to speak eagerly.
"What a pity you should have come too late for the catastrophe, when you had seen all the preface! Five days ago Bella and Charley made their great coup, and were married in Paris."
"And Bruce?" I said, recovering from the intelligence, which was not so unexpected, after all.
"Ah! Bruce"—Guy replied; "I should be very glad if I knew what he was doing at this moment. I have been expecting him every day; but nothing has been heard of him since he left my mother's presence in a rabid state of fury. Did I tell you it was from Kerton they fled? I thought he must have come to me for an explanation, knowing that I was an accessory before the fact. Indeed, I lent Charley the sinews of war in the shape of a blank check, which I see this morning he has filled up for a thousand—just like his modesty. Well, I hope they'll amuse themselves! Bruce has never been near me. Suicide is the most charitable suggestion I've heard yet; but coroners are silent, and the Thames, if it is conscious of that unlucky though disagreeable man, keeps his secret so far!"
Then he went on to give me more particulars of the escapade. It seems that Miss Raymond had gone out to walk alone, after luncheon, and that nothing more was heard of her till dinner-time, when a note was found on her dressing-table, addressed to her aunt, containing the intelligence of her flight with Forrester, and a little piece of ready-made penitence—the first for all whom it might concern, the second for her father.
That placid Lord Ullin received the news by telegraph when he was well into his second rubber at the "Travelers;" he put the message into his pocket without remark, and won the rubber before he rose. It has been reported that he was somewhat absent during its progress, so much so as to rough his partner's strongest suit; but this I conceive to have been an after-thought of some one's, or a canard of the club. Impavid as the Horatian model-man—(just in all his dealings, and tenacious of the odd trick)—I can not imagine the convulsion of nature which would have made him jeopardize by any sin of omission or commission the winning of the long odds.
He found Bruce that night, and told him all. He never would give an account of that interview: it must have been a curious one.