“I should be very ungallant were I to refuse to serve a young lady,” the old man said, politely.—“Jarvis,” he added, turning to the clerk who had conducted Eleanor to his apartment, “do you think you could contrive to look up the list of passengers in the Princess Alice, October 4, ’52?”
Mr. Jarvis, who had told Richard to go about his business upon the day before, said he had no doubt he could, and went away to perform this errand.
Eleanor’s breath grew short and quick, and her colour rose as she waited for the clerk’s return. Richard executed impossible passages on the brim of his hat. The shipbroker watched the girl’s face, and drew his own deductions from the flutter of agitation visible in that bright countenance.
“Aha!” he thought, “a love affair, no doubt. This pretty girl in the blue bonnet has come here to look after a runaway sweetheart.”
The clerk returned, carrying a ledger, with his thumb between two of the leaves. He opened the uninteresting-looking volume, and laid it on the table before his employer, pointing with his spare forefinger to one particular entry.
“A berth was taken for a Mr. Launcelot Darrell, who was to share his cabin with a Mr. Thomas Halliday,” the shipbroker said, looking at the passage to which the clerk pointed.
Eleanor’s face crimsoned. She had wronged the widow’s son, then, after all.
“But the name was crossed out afterwards,” continued the old man, “and there’s another entry farther down, dated October 5th. The ship sailed without Mr. Darrell.”
The crimson flush faded out of Eleanor’s face and left it deadly pale. She tottered a few paces towards the table, with her hand stretched out, as if she would have taken the book from the shipbroker and examined the entry for herself. But midway between the chair she had left and the table, her strength failed her, and she would have fallen if Richard Thornton had not dashed his hat upon the ground, and caught her sinking figure in his outstretched arms.
“Dear me!” exclaimed the shipbroker, “bless my soul: a glass of water, Jarvis; this is very sad, very sad, indeed. A runaway lover, I suppose, or a brother, perhaps. These sort of things are always happening. I assure you, if I had the gift that some of you young people have, I could write half-a-dozen romances out of the history of this office.”