The servant stared at the pale eager young face and the pained sorrowful eyes.
“‘Boy left his love,’” repeated the girl,—“Oh well, sir, wouldn’t you like to come in a minute, sir?”
“No!” said Boy almost fiercely. “I’m not fit to come in! I am a thief and a scoundrel! But all the same—say to her that Boy left his love!”
He rushed away leaving the servant panic-stricken, gazing after him with the sealed packet for Miss Letty in her hands.
Hurrying back again to his lodgings with grief and fury raging in his soul, Boy sat down for a moment to think. The force of his trouble and the mental victory he had gained over himself in the restoration of Miss Letty’s money had cleared his brain, and he was able to consider his position more calmly than he had considered it before. A sense of freedom came over him,—he had shaken himself out of a net of crime before it was too late—and it was the beautiful, merciful, angelic spirit of his childhood’s friend, Miss Letty, that had saved him! When she had the power to ruin him she had rescued him,—and for this, he resolved to prove himself worthy of her clemency! After a little meditation, he wrote a long letter of explanation to Major Desmond, telling him the whole history of his adventure at the theatre and his visit to the house of the “Marquis” de Gramont, begging him to say the best he could for him to Miss Letty.
“Tell her,” he wrote, “that the horror she has saved me from, shall bring out whatever good stuff there is in me, if any. Please do not come to see me, for I could not bear it. And do not send me any money, because I could not bear that either. If you will just let me have a wire saying how dear Miss Letty is some time to-morrow, that is all I ask of you. And after that, both of you forget me till you hear of me again.
Yours,
‘Boy’
(R. D’Arcy-Muir).”
This done he wrote a note to the “Marquis” de Gramont, who had carefully reminded him of his address that very morning. The note was as follows:—
“Sir,
I have placed my affair with you in the hands of my old friend Major Desmond, who will inquire into the exact justice of my debts of honour.