The travellers proceeded to the hotel, where rooms had been prepared for them. There were flowers in Joan's room, which her maid said she had rearranged, so awkwardly had they been placed in the vase. The Wades, it appeared, were out, and had announced their intention of not returning to lunch. They were, the hotel porter thought, to take that meal at Mrs. Vansittart's.
“I think,” said Lord Ferriby, “that I shall go down to the works.”
“Yes, do,” answered White, with an expressionless countenance.
“Perhaps you will accompany me?” suggested Joan's father.
“No—think not. Can't hit it off with Roden. Perhaps Joan would like to see the Palace in the Wood.”
Joan thought that it was her duty to go to the malgamite works, and murmured the word “Nuxine,” without, however, much enthusiasm; but White happened to remember that it was mixing-day. So Lord Ferriby went off alone in a hired carriage, as had been his intention from the first; for White knew even less about the ethics of commerce than did Cornish.
The account of affairs that awaited his lordship at the works was, no doubt, satisfactory enough, for the manufacture of malgamite had been proceeding at high pressure night and day. Von Holzen had, as he told Marguerite, been poor all his life, and poverty is a hard task-master. He was not going to be poor again. The grey carts had been passing up and down Park Straat more often than ever, taking their loads to one or other of the railway stations, and bringing, as they passed her house, a gleam of anger to Mrs. Vansittart's eyes.
“The scoundrels!” she muttered. “The scoundrels! Why does not Tony act?”
But Tony Cornish, who alone knew the full extent of Von Holzen's determination not to be frustrated, could not act—for Dorothy's sake.
A string of the quiet grey carts passed up Park Straat when the party assembled there had risen from the luncheon-table. Mrs. Vansittart and Mr. Wade were standing together at the window, which was large even in this city of large and spotless windows. Dorothy and Cornish were talking together at the other end of the room, and Marguerite was supposed to be looking at a book of photographs.