“So,” he muttered, turning sullenly away, “he thinks he has outwitted me. God bless the Atlantic cable! When my aristocratic friend arrives in Liverpool, he shall receive an ovation—from Scotland Yards!”
While Vernet thus comforted himself, Mr. Follingsbee, seated in a cosy upper room of his own dwelling, addressed himself to a gentleman very closely resembling Mr. Alan Warburton.
“So here we are,” he said, with a chuckle. “The Clytie has sailed before now; you are on your way to Europe. Mr. Vernet will head you off, of course. In the meantime, we gain all that we wanted, time.”
CHAPTER XLVI.
DR. BAYLESS
All the long night that followed Leslie’s appearance among the Francoises, Mamma was alert and watchful.
Often she crept to the door of the inner room, where Leslie slumbered heavily. Often she glanced, with a grin of satisfaction, toward the couch where Franz lay breathing regularly, and scarcely stirring the whole night through. Often she turned her face, with varying expressions, toward the corner where Papa slumbered uneasily, muttering vaguely from time to time. But never once did her eyes close. All the night she watched and listened, pondered and planned.
As morning dawned, the stillness of the inner room was pierced by a burst of shrill laughter, followed by words swiftly uttered but indistinct. Mamma hastened at once to the bedside of her new charge.
Leslie had broken her heavy slumber, but the fire of fever burned in her cheeks, the light of insanity blazed from her eyes; and for many days it mattered little to her that she was a fugitive from home, a woman under suspicion, and helpless in the hands of her enemies. Nature, indulging in a kindly freak, had taken her back to her girlhood’s days, before her first trouble came. She was Leslie Uliman again; watched over by loving parents, care-free and happy.