"I will." Timmons gave him his hand. "And now," he added, "I don't think you know the good news."
"What?"
"Why, Forbes's bakery was burned out last night."
"Hurroo!" cried Stamer, with a yell of sudden relief and joy. "My lord, you haven't a single bit of evidence against Tom Stamer. My lord, good-bye. Mr. John Timmons and Tom Stamer against the world!"
CHAPTER XXXV.
[THE RUINS.]
The morning following Hanbury's visit to Grimsby Street saw the order of arrival of the ladies in the sitting-room reversed. Mrs. Grace was there first. Edith had been too excited when she went to bed after the young man's disclosures to sleep, and it was not until the small hours were growing big that the girl could close her eyes. As a consequence, she was late.
But when at last she did awake, how different were her feelings from the day before! She could scarcely believe she was the same being, or it was the same world. That letter from Mr. Coutch, of Castleton, had plunged her into a depth of leaden hopelessness she had never known before. Now all was changed. Then she was the last of a race of shopkeepers; now she had for cousin a man whose ancestor had been a king. Whatever fate might do against her in the future, it could never take away that consoling consciousness. At Miss Graham's in Streatham the girls used to say she ought to be a queen. Well, a not very remote relative of hers would have sat on a throne if she had lived and come into her rights! Prodigious.
She found her grandmother waiting for her. The old lady was seated in the window, spectacles on nose, reading the morning paper. All the papers of that morning had not an account of the disaster at Chelsea, because of the late hour at which it occurred. Mrs. Grace's paper was one that did not get the news in time for insertion that morning, so that the old lady and Edith were spared the pain of believing that a man who sat in this room yesterday had met with a sudden and horrible death.
But Mrs. Grace's eye had caught a paragraph headed "The Last of the Poles." Without a word or comment she handed the paper to the girl and said merely, "Read that. It ought to interest you."