In earlier days, before Barbara had made her bow upon the scene, Turner had been associated in various affairs of business with Mr. Vanderstein, then plain Mr. Moses Stein, familiarly known to his intimates of those days by the endearing nickname of Nosey Stein; sometimes in moments of rare affection, when some particularly brilliant coup had just been brought off, he was alluded to as Nosey Posey.
Mrs. Vanderstein, then Miss Ruth Hengersohn, had changed all this. The name of Stein was repugnant to her, though it seems a good enough sort of appellation in its way; Nosey or Nosey Posey she could only think of with a shudder; while the idea of being herself known as Mrs. Nosey filled her with a burning determination, which, as it cooled, hardened to the inflexible consistency of chilled steel.
Before their marriage took place, Mr. Stein, who always admiringly recognised, when he met it, a will more adamant than his own, had at great trouble, inconvenience, and expense changed his name for that of Vanderstein, by which he was afterwards known.
The enterprises, chiefly connected with the promotion of companies, in which this gentleman had, in his early, forgotten—and best forgotten—youth, the assistance and co-operation of Mr. William Turner, were in their nature precarious and not a source, unfortunately, of the profit foreseen by those who set out upon them.
At the conclusion of one of them, indeed, things took on a very unexpected complexion, assuming in the twinkling of an eye so disagreeable a hue, that the directors of the company, whose management was suddenly the centre of attraction and which was in danger of receiving a most unwelcome, if flattering, attention from the public prosecutor, thought it best to disappear with a rapidity and unobtrusiveness highly creditable to a modest desire for self-effacement at a moment when free advertisement was within the grasp of each of them.
Luckily for Mr. Stein, his name did not appear among those who sat on the board of this particular company and he was able to pursue his way in a retiring and profitable manner; but it was otherwise with his less fortunate friend, Bill Turner.
It was to the search for this worthy though too incautious person that the efforts of the authorities were principally directed; and it was only by returning once more, under an assumed name, to the racing circles which he had during a short interval forsaken for the city, and still further owing to the absence of the chief witness for the prosecution, whose whereabouts could not for a long time be ascertained, that Turner was able to escape the fate which ought assuredly to have been his.
He settled finally at Newmarket, and married the daughter of a neighbouring squire, who never spoke again to a child who could so far forget her father’s position and ignore his commands as to unite herself to the more than questionable William.
The poor lady, however, took her revenge on her relations, and her leave of a world in which she had found time to suffer some disillusions, on the day that saw Barbara ushered into the light; so that the little girl was left to grow up entirely in that odour of the stables which her father preferred, in his heart, to any more delicate perfume.