“First, because you are Nita’s friend—not perhaps, a friend of long standing, but, if I mistake not, a very loving one; and, secondly, as well as chiefly, because I want you to find out from her where her father is at present, and let me know.”
“There is something disagreeably underhand in such a proceeding,” objected Emma.
“You know that a doctor is, or ought to be, considered a sort of pope,” returned Lawrence. “I absolve you from all guilt by assuring you that there is urgent need for pursuing the course I suggest.”
“Well, I will at all events do what I can to help you,” said Emma. “Shall I find her in her own room?”
“Yes, in bed, attended, with Mrs Stoutley’s permission, by Susan Quick. Get rid of the maid before entering on the subject.”
In a few minutes Emma returned to the Doctor, who still walked up and down in earnest conversation with Lewis. She had succeeded, she said, in persuading Nita to let her father be sent for, and the place to which he had gone for a few days was Saxon, in the Rhone valley. The Count’s address had also been obtained, but Nita had stipulated that the messenger should on no account disturb her father by entering the house, but should send for him and wait outside.
“Strange prohibition!” exclaimed Lawrence. “However, we must send off a messenger without delay.”
“Stay,” said Lewis, detaining his friend; “there seems to be delicacy as well as mystery connected with this matter, you must therefore allow me to be the messenger.”
Lawrence had no objection to the proposal, and in less than an hour Lewis, guided by Antoine Grennon, was on the road to Martigny by way of the celebrated pass of the Tête-Noire.
The guide was one of Nature’s gentlemen. Although low in the social scale, and trained in a rugged school, he possessed that innate refinement of sentiment and feeling—a gift of God sometimes transmitted through a gentle mother—which makes a true gentleman. Among men of the upper ranks this refinement of soul may be counterfeited by the superficial polish of manners; among those who stand lower in the social scale it cannot be counterfeited at all, but still less can it be concealed. As broadcloth can neither make nor mar a true gentleman, so fustian cannot hide one. If Antoine Grennon had been bred “at Court,” and arrayed in sumptuous apparel, he could not have been more considerate than he was of the feelings and wishes of others, or more gentle, yet manly, in his demeanour.