The men answering that it would, he stepped in, and they went off as fast as their state of semi-drunkenness (in which London chair-men generally were at that time in the morning) would allow, and eventually they reached Park Place, whereon, alighting, Lewis Granger walked down the narrow street regardless of the drizzle, until he stood before No. 13, when, taking from his pocket the letter he had written at the night house, he dropped it into the gaping dolphin's mouth in bronze which formed the entrance to the letter-box.
"If Dallas loves his mother, as I have heard tell," he said to himself, "that should do his business, and prevent him from interrupting us to-morrow. Our hymeneal ceremony needs no disturbance--until it is over."
After which he went back to his chair and was conveyed to his own lodgings in King Street. Yet when in them--or rather, in "it," since his abode consisted of but a small, meanly furnished room on the third floor--he still seemed disinclined for rest, and appeared to be, indeed, more disposed towards meditation and reflection than aught else; while, as food for such reflection, two pieces of paper which he drew from his pocket appeared to furnish it since he regarded them long and steadily. Each was a bill properly drawn and accepted, yet unlike. For the first, which had written across it the signature "Glastonbury," had also stamped on it in rough, coarse letters, though very plain ones, the word "Counterfeit," while the other was a bill for five thousand guineas, payable to Lewis Granger and signed by Algernon Bufton.
"Yet," muttered Granger to himself, as he regarded the latter, "you are useless; you will never be paid. Nevertheless, I will keep you--keep you safe. You may some day become a witness, if not a principal."
After which he laughed softly to himself, and continued to do so until he was in bed.
[CHAPTER VI.]
LOVE'S CONTEST.
"If I possess him, I may be unhappy,
But, if I lose him, I am surely so."
Meanwhile a different scene was being enacted earlier in Cowley Street, Lambeth, or, as it was more often termed, Cowley Street, Westminster--a spot now quaint and old, but then almost fresh and new; a street to which, then as now, there would come from the river a wafted scent of new-mown hay (especially in the warm days of harvest-time, when windows were open), brought up or down the river in great cumbrous barges for sale in London; a quiet place which was then as peaceful and tranquil as the streets of old country towns are now.
All through the day which preceded that night when Beau Bufton had celebrated his last hours of bachelor freedom, as he had cynically termed the conclusion of his unwedded life, Ariadne Thorne had either sat in the great parlour on the lower floor--a floor raised some three or four feet above the level of the road and narrow footway outside--had sat glancing eagerly out of the long windows which faced the walls that enclosed the grounds of the Abbey, or, pacing the spacious room, had given herself up to uneasy thoughts.