'Not a very profitable way of carrying on business,' said Ida. 'He must have had means independent of his trade.'
'Well, I don't suppose we shall ever see him again,' returned Vernon, cheerfully, somewhat to Ida's disgust; for this indifference to the sudden close of a once enthusiastic friendship argued a lightness and fickleness of disposition in Sir Vernon Palliser.
And now it was again the eve of Bessie's birthday, that day which had twice been fraught with fatal influences for Bessie's friend; and Ida could not put away the feeling that this seventh of September, finding her once again on the scene of past fatalities, must needs bring her some new evil, some undreamed of crisis in her life. Yet what would happen to her now? she asked herself. The play was played out. She had lived her life. For her tragedy and comedy were alike over and done with.
The morning of the seventh dawned fair and bright. If there were any omen in those pinky clouds which flecked the tender gray of early morning, surely it must be a portent of good and not of evil; although Lady Palliser, who was not given to over-cheerful views, declared at breakfast that such roseate hues in early morning meant bad weather before noon.
'Let the weather be never so unkind, we'll find a way of enjoying ourselves at the Abbey,' said Aunt Betsy, who was in tremendous spirits, 'won't we, Vernie?'
'Of course,' answered Vernon. 'Mother has a new bonnet, and is afraid of getting it spoiled. The weather won't interfere with us. We can play hide-and-seek in the Abbey cellars.'
'Oh, Vernie! and get shut behind a secret panel or in a chest, like that poor girl in the poem Ida used to read to us.'
'Don't be afraid, mother. If I get into a chest, you may depend I shall know how to get out of it. That girl in the poem was a duffer for not having made more row; and her lover was a beastly sneak for not ferreting out her hiding-place.'
'They ought to have had a detective down from London,' remarked Lady
Palliser, ignoring both the scene and the date of the story.
Her reading had lain much among novels in which the private detective was omnipotent, the unraveller of all mysteries, the avenger of every wrong.