“Could you use money without her knowing about it?”
“Lord,” exclaimed the woman, “it wouldn’t be hard, sir! She only knows that there is such a thing as money when the bills come and she hasn’t got a penny. Or when the poor come! She’s got a heart of gold, sir, for everybody that is in need.”
He took out of his wallet a wad of notes and put them in Higgins’ hands. “Just pay up some bills on the sly, and don’t you tell her on your life. I don’t want her to be worried.” Explaining with sensitive understanding: “It’s all right, Mrs. Higgins; I’m from her town, you know.” And the woman who admired him and understood him, and whose life had made her keen to read things as they were, said earnestly:
“I quite understand how it is, sir. It is just as though it came straight from ’ome. She overdraws her salary months ahead.”
“Have you been with Miss Lane long?”
“Ever since she toured in Europe, and nobody could serve her without being very fond of her indeed.”
Dan put out his big warm hand eagerly. “You’re a corker, Mrs. Higgins.”
“I could walk around the world for her, sir.”
“Go ahead and do it then,” he smiled, “and I’ll pay for all the boot leather you wear out!”
As he went down-stairs, already too late to keep an engagement made with his fiancée, he stopped in the writing-room to scribble off a note of excuse to the duchess. At the opposite table Dan saw Prince Poniotowsky, writing, as well. The Hungarian did not see Blair, and when he had finished his note he called a page boy and Dan could hear him send his letter up to Miss Lane’s suite. The young Westerner thought with confident exaltation, “Well, he’ll get left all right, and I’m darned if I don’t sit here and see him turned down!”