"Yes, mother, but bear up for me, for my sake."
"I will, dear! I will indeed. We shall not stop here. We shall go away at once."
"Very well. Just what you please, mother."
"I couldn't bear to stay here and see you, my child."
"If you wish it, mother, let us go away at once. Look at me how brave I am. Do not give way. Do not give way, for my sake."
"I will try--I will try."
The grief seemed to be all the mother's, and the duty of consolation all the daughter's duty.
It is the sorrows of others that most hurt noble natures, and the natures of noble women most of all.
That night it was settled that the Ashtons should go to Norway and Sweden for three months. Norway and Sweden had been put into Mr. Ashton's head by the announcement of Sir Julius Whinfield months ago that he was making up a party for his yacht to go north that summer, and that the Dowager Lady Forcar and Mrs. Lawrence, Sir Julius's married sister, and her husband, Mr. James Lawrence, had promised to be of the party. "We can arrange to meet somewhere," said Mr. Ashton, and so the expedition was arranged.
When John Hanbury left Dr. Shaw's, he thought that now, all being over with Leigh, he was bound in common rectitude to disclose the source of the gold which Leigh had intended passing off as the result of his imaginary discovery in chemistry or alchemy. The simplest course would be to go to Scotland Yard and there tell all he knew. Against this course prudence suggested that perhaps the name and address given were imaginary, and that there was no such man or street. He was not anxious to pass through streets in which he was known, and he was glad of anything to do. How better could he employ an hour than by driving to London Road and trying to find out if any such man as Timmons existed? He did not like the whole thing, but he could not rest easy while he had the name of a man whom Leigh said dealt largely in the fruit of robberies and thefts. At all events, supposing the whole story told him by the dwarf was fiction, no harm could come of a visit to Tunbridge Street.