"There's time; and no one can do that sort of thing better than you."
Again the lips parted in that curious substitute for a smile, as if the woman's words had conveyed a compliment.
"Oh, yes, there's time; and, as you say, I dare say I'll be able to make a decent job of him."
When the woman left him it was to remove her hat and coat. Then she went into a good-sized apartment, in which there was a blazing fire. In a corner was a bookshelf filled with books; she took one down, it was Burke's "Landed Gentry." She took a case out of some receptacle in her bodice, and lit a cigarette. Settling herself in a big arm-chair before the fire, she put her feet upon a second chair, and set to studying Burke. She found what she wanted among the B's.
"There it is: 'Beaton, Sir George, seventh baronet,' and all the rest of it. 'Seat, Adisham, Wilts; unmarried; next heir, his brother, Sydney, D.S.O., the Guards, captain, twenty-eight years old.' If that coat was built for him it looks as if that ought to be our man."
She closed the book and let it fall upon the floor. She inhaled the smoke of her cigarette, staring with a contemplative air at the flaming fire.
"I wonder what's his record? One can, of course, find out, but there will be hardly time before he's wanted. An heir to a baronetcy, a captain in the Guards, and a D.S.O. hardly comes to snatching watches and chains without good and sufficient reasons. And yet, in spite of the state he's in, he hardly looks it, and by this time I ought to be a judge of that kind of thing. He must have had some queer experiences, that young gentleman. I wonder if any of them have been queerer than the one he'll have to-morrow. And what'll become of him afterwards? It seems a pity, but so many things are pitiful which have to be."
As she indulged in the expression of that almost philosophical opinion she expelled the smoke of her cigarette from between her pretty lips, and she smiled. Then she sat up straighter in her chair, and threw her scarcely half-consumed cigarette into the fire.
"And there are those who pretend that this is a very good world that we live in!"