“Yes, it was he,” said Violet.
“Ah!” murmured David, and said no more.
“If it was these certificates which he had in his mind when he wrote that note,” said she, “then he, too, as well as you, must have a chance of securing them from the girl. So you had better be careful that he is not beforehand with you.”
David looked squarely at her. “So long as you obtain them, what does it matter from whom they come?”
“Of course,” she replied, with her eyes on the ground, “I shall owe much gratitude to the person who hands them to me.”
He took a step forward, whispering: “Must I be the winner?”
He received no answer from her; only, a wave of blood, a blush that flooded her being from her toes to the roots of her hair all of a sudden, suffused Violet, while he stood awaiting her reply. He put out his hand with a fine self-control. “Well, I must try,” he cried lightly. She just touched his fingers with hers, and the next moment he was striding from her.
His cab was waiting outside. Calling, “Quick as you can!” to the driver, he sprang in, and they started briskly away. He was well content inwardly. Something bird-like seemed new-fledged and fluttering a little somewhere inside. He had tasted the sweet poison of honey-dew.
As for doubt, he had none at the moment. Jenny he had left safe with Mrs. Grover; he was sure that she had the certificates with her. But when he reached the middle of Oxford-St., he saw that which made him start—Van Hupfeldt in a landau driving eastward, and, sitting beside the coachman, the valet Neil. What spurred David’s interest was the pace at which the landau’s horses were racing through the traffic, and also the face of the man in the carriage, so gaunt and wild, leaning forward with his two hands clenched on his knees, as if to press the carriage faster forward by the strain of his soul.
At once a host of speculations crowded upon David’s mind. Now, for the first time, it occurred to him that Neil may have shadowed him and the girl to the flat, that Van Hupfeldt might have the daring to be on the way to the flat to win Jenny from him. He felt that he could hardly prevail against Van Hupfeldt with Jenny—Van Hupfeldt being rich—and the two high-steppers in the landau were fast leaving the cab-horse behind. An eagerness to be quickly at his flat rose in David, so without stopping his cab he stood out near the splash-board and cried to his amazed driver: “I say! You come inside, and let me drive.”