“She's just your sort—not too bad and not too good—not too nashty, and not too nishe; a good-humoured lash, rough and ready, and knowsh a thing or two.”
“Ye're there, are ye?” inquired Mr. Levi, playfully, as he crossed the door-stone, and placed his fists on the bar grinning.
“What will you take, Sir, please?” inquired the young woman, at one side of whom was the usual row of taps and pump-handles.
“Now, Miss Phœbe, give me a brandy and shoda, pleashe. When I talked to you in thish 'ere place 'tother night, you wished to engage for a lady's maid. What would you shay to me, if I was to get you a firsht-chop tip-top pla-ashe of the kind? Well, don't you shay a word—that brandy ain't fair measure—and I'll tell you. It'sh a la-ady of ra-ank! where wagesh ish no-o object; and two years' savings, and a good match with a well-to-do 'andsome young fellow, will set you hup in a better place than this 'ere.”
“It comes very timely, Sir, for I'm to leave to-morrow, and I was thinking of going home to my uncle in a day or two, in Chester.”
“Well it's all settled. Come you down to my offishe, you know where it is, to-morrow, at three, and I'll 'av all partickulars for you, and a note to the lady from her brother, the baronet; and if you be a good girl, and do as you're bid, you'll make a little fortune of it.”
She curtsied, with her eyes very round, as he, with a wag of his head drank down what remained of his brandy and soda, and wiping his mouth with his glove, he said, “Three o'clock sha-arp, mind; good-bye, Phœbe, lass, and don't you forget all I said.”
He stood ungallantly with his back towards her on the threshold lighting a cigar, and so soon as he had it in his own phrase, “working at high blast,” he got into his cab, and jingled towards his office, with all his keys about him.
While Miss Arden remained all unconscious, and even a little amused at the strange shifts to which her brief stay and extemporised household at Mortlake exposed her, a wily and determined strategist was drawing his toils around her.
The process of isolation was nearly completed, without having once excited her suspicions; and, with the same perfidious skill, the house itself was virtually undergoing those modifications which best suited his designs.