In furtherance of his plan to get her away from the yacht, he said, quite deliberately,
'Your friend Mrs. Deroubigne has left Altona.'
'Left it—gone!' exclaimed Ellinor, in a weak voice, and grieved but not surprised.
'Yes.'
'For where?'
'To another residence in Hamburg, whither I shall shortly take you and leave you to relate your own adventures, for I am deuced tired of this kind of work.'
A gush of joy, but joy without the least gratitude, welled up in the heart of Ellinor, and she prepared with wonderful alacrity to accompany him, never suspecting that he was cajoling her and meant to put her in the hands of Frau Wyburg, who for a sum paid down had promised to keep her safely till he made other arrangements.
He could not take her to the Kron Prinzen, L'Europe, or any of the great hotels, for there she would have claimed and found protection, and for him she would, he knew, be quite helpless in the hands of Frau Wyburg and her husband; thus he resolved to keep his own counsel on leaving the yacht as to where he was taking her; but Mr. Dolly Dewsnap and Kingbolt too had shrewdly their own ideas on the subject.
'Sorry we are not to have your company to the coast of France, Miss Ellinor,' said Dewsnap, as he pressed a glass of wine upon her ere she departed.
'I don't think you'll miss much,' said Ringbolt, as the pale girl made no reply. 'There you get sour wine, and they call it vin ordinaire, and all kinds of offal cooked with fine French names, so that I defy you to tell whether you are eating a bird of the air or a fish of the sea. Ah, there is no place like Old England.'