'Der Teufel!' said Herr Wyburg, puffing out a cloud from his huge meerschaum, 'but such things will happen.'
'I have been engaged in many a lark and scrape, as you, Wyburg, know well enough, but never in one so peculiar as this. The girls who eloped with me before were always willing enough.'
'She may turn ill—downright ill—on our hands unless some change is brought about, and may have to be sent to the Krankenhaus; and then—what then?'
Sleath had not thought of this contingency, so he became alarmed and asked to see Ellinor.
On his entrance she rose at once and came towards him, her eyes dilated with hope or expectation and her lips parted, but without offering him a hand.
'You have news for me at last?' she said.
'News—about what—about whom?'
'Mrs. Deroubigne and Mary.'
'I have sent or gone daily to the post-office in the Post Strasse, but neither by telegraph nor inquiry can I discover their whereabouts in Brussels,' he replied, unblushingly: 'and even if we went there—'
'There! that is not to be thought of. I shall take the steamer for London,' exclaimed Ellinor, looking round her as if she would start that moment.