“You must quit this place this moment, sir, and return to it no more. I caution you, out of considerations which you cannot surmise, though you may some day know them, not to repeat this visit, for it will be at a risk which, knowingly, you would fly from incurring—go!”
Malcolm took up his hat and stick. He would have spoken, but Lotte walked out of the room and left him, So he descended the stairs, feeling that he had not been anything like so successful as he had hoped.
“I have broken the ice, though,” he muttered, with a half-satisfied nod of the head, “that is something She is very pretty, and very scornful, by Jove! but then, girls are always coy at first. What’s the next step?—capital idea—I’ll go and see Lester Vane, and get his advice. Strange that she should ask about the people at home—odd thing that—what did it mean?”
He had not much brains to puzzle, so he soon gave up speculating upon what he could find no clue to.
He had not long to wait for the return of Lester Vane to town, for, after the incident which had occurred at Harleydale Manor, and which had ended as it were in the expulsion of young Vivian, old Wilton had an interview with him, and suggested that, under existing circumstances, it would be the best policy for him to take his leave, and return when Flora’s mind was more calm, and he would have the field to himself.
Lester Vane the more readily assented to this proposition, as a glance at Mark Wilton’s form, and the sound of his voice, told him he had somewhere met him under disagreeable circumstances, although his memory would not furnish him with the details, and, for the present, is would be politic to avoid him. He, therefore, acted upon the suggestion, and disappeared from Harleydale.
He had not been many days in London before Malcolm Grahame called on him, and after some desultory conversation, in the course of which Helen’s name arose, and he had to repress further questioning by declaring that she was on a visit to a branch of the family in the wilds of Scotland—he stated his own case, his design, and the difficulties which hitherto had prevented him from carrying it into execution.
Vane regarded him with a smile of contempt, even as he pricked up his ears at Malcolm’s glowing description of the beauty of the girl of whom he spoke. Malcolm was cunning enough to conceal that she was the heroine of the adventure in Hyde Park, but all else he knew respecting her he made a clean breast of.
Vane lay back in his chair, and smoked his cigar in deep thought.
He fixed his eyes upon Malcolm, and said, in a decided manner—