“Yes, a very guarded tone, with a certain note of preparation for unpleasant possibilities. So it struck me. I do sincerely hope there isn’t anything in it.”
“So do I, by Jove! but I shouldn’t be so very astonished. Of course we don’t know anything against Purcell—at least I don’t—but somehow he doesn’t strike me as a very scrupulous man. His outlook on life jars a bit; don’t you feel that sometimes?”
“The commercial standard isn’t quite the same as the professional, you know,” Jack Rodney answered evasively; “and financial circles are not exactly hotbeds of the higher morality. But I know of nothing to Purcell’s discredit.”
“No, of course not. But he isn’t the same class as his wife; she’s a lot too good for a coarse, bucolic fellow like that. I wonder why the deuce she married him. I used to think she rather liked you.”
“A woman can’t marry every man she rather likes, you know, Phil, unless she happens to live in Ladak; and even there I believe there are limits. But to come back to Purcell, we may be worrying ourselves about nothing. To-morrow we shall get into touch with him by telegraph and then we may hear something from him.”
Here the consideration of Purcell and his affairs dropped so far as conversation went; but in the elder man’s mind certain memories had been revived by his brother’s remark and occupied it during the remainder of the walk. For he, too, had once thought that Maggie Haygarth rather liked him, and he now recalled the shock of disagreeable surprise with which he had heard of her marriage. But that was over and done with long ago, and the question now was, how was the Sandhopper—at present moored in Whitesand Bay—to be got from the Land’s End to her moorings above Westminster Bridge; a problem that engaged the attention of the two brothers until they turned into their respective beds, and the laggard, according to immemorial custom, blew out the light.
In spite of Mrs. Purcell’s admonition they were some minutes late on the following morning. Their two friends were already seated at the breakfast table and it needed no extraordinary powers of observation to see that something had happened. Their hostess was pale and looked worried and somewhat frightened and Varney was preternaturally grave. A telegram lay open on the table by Margaret’s place, and, as Rodney advanced to shake hands, she held it out to him without a word. He took the paper and read the brief, but ominous, message that confirmed but too plainly his misgivings of the previous night.
“Where is Dan? Expected him here Tuesday night. Hope nothing wrong.
Bradford. Angler’s Hotel. Oulton.”
Rodney laid down the telegram and looked at Margaret. “This is a queer business,” said he. “Have you done anything?”
“No,” she replied. “What can we do?”