It would have been strange if such talk had not given him pleasure, despite the little information conveyed by it.
“All Sabby hab say; but not all she got do.”
“What have you to do?” demanded Maynard, in an anxious undertone.
“You gib dis,” was the reply of the mulatto, as, with the adroitness peculiar to her race and sex, she slipped something white into the pocket of his surtout.
The carriage wheels were heard outside the hall-door, gritting upon the gravel.
Without danger of being observed, the departing guest could not stay in such company any longer; and passing a half-sovereign into Sabby’s hand, he silently descended the stair, and as silently took seat in the carriage.
The bearer of the portmanteau, as he shut to the carriage door, could not help still wondering at such an ill-timed departure.
“Not a bad sort of gent, anyhow,” was his reflection, as he turned back under the hall-lamp to examine the half-sovereign that had been slipped into his palm.
And while he was doing this, the gent in question was engaged in a far more interesting scrutiny. Long before the carriage had passed out of the park—even while it was yet winding round the “sweep”—its occupant had plunged his hand into the pocket of his surtout and drawn out the paper that had been there so surreptitiously deposited.
It was but a tiny slip—a half-sheet torn from its crested counterfoil. And the writing upon it was in pencil; only a few words, as if scrawled in trembling haste!