Beaumont knew very well that he had done an invalid thing, and that the signature of the lady locked up in his safe was in law worth nothing. But he was used to doing illegal things, he always found they answered best. The transaction was bonâ fide on his part, and the jewel was in his hands.
Before the Duke of Otterbourne would lose it, and let the matter be brought before a tribunal, Beaumont knew very well that he himself should be repaid. She could not repay him, her husband could not, but the family, the head of the family, would. So he had always reasoned. “La famille! C’est le magôt de ces gens là,” he said to himself.
The death of the Duke of Otterbourne had disagreeably surprised him, and made him take a trip across the Channel, a fidgety, worrying little journey which he at all times disliked, for he was never comfortable out of the Rue de la Paix. He had scarcely reached London when the newspapers informed him of the illness, and in a few days of the demise, of the late duke’s successor. He was much too well-bred to intrude on the retreat of the widowed duchess. He knew that the retreat would not last very long. He amused himself by going to see the imitation jewelry of Birmingham, and was lost in wonder that a nation which has the art of India under its eyes can outrage heaven and earth by gewgaws meet for savages. Then, having taken precautions so as to be informed of all which might be done with the Otterbourne heirlooms, he returned to the home of his heart and awaited events. When some few days later he received her curt summons he was extremely astonished, but agreeably so; he concluded he was about to receive his money. No one, he thought, would write in that imperious tone who was not prepared to pay to the uttermost farthing. So he reluctantly again undertook that fidgeting little journey of Calais-Douvres which the wit and wisdom of two nations are content to leave in chaos whilst they ridicule the Chinese for not making good roads.
He read her letter again on the steamer; it was so very uncivil that it could only mean payment, immediate and complete. Why not? The Otterbourne family was after all a very illustrious one.
CHAPTER XXI.
“Poor papa is deaded,” said Jack to Boo on his return to town; in the tenderness of his heart he was beginning to forget the dead man’s pinches and to pity his retirement from the world.
“I know; and I do hate black so,” said Boo twitching wrathfully at her frock.
“I’m ’fraid he must be so dull in heaven,” said Jack seriously. “I don’t think they let them race, or bet, or do anything amusin’ there.”
He wasn’t sure, but he thought he had heard so.
“I ought to have gone down as well as you, instead of Gerry,” said Boo, who had been exceedingly aggrieved at being left in town like Baby.