“He gave you money then?” asked Challoner, who had been dwelling singly on that fact.
“I begin to interest you,” she cried. “But, frankly, you are condemned to help me. If the service I had to ask of you were serious, were suspicious, were even unusual, I should say no more. But what is it? To take a pleasure trip (for which, if you will suffer me, I propose to pay) and to carry from one lady to another a sum of money! What can be more simple?”
“Is the sum,” asked Challoner, “considerable?”
She produced a packet from her bosom; and observing that she had not yet found time to make the count, tore open the cover and spread upon her knees a considerable number of Bank of England notes. It took some time to make the reckoning, for the notes were of every degree of value; but at last, and counting a few loose sovereigns, she made out the sum to be a little under £710 sterling. The sight of so much money worked an immediate revolution in the mind of Challoner.
“And you propose, madam,” he cried, “to intrust that money to a perfect stranger?”
“Ah!” said she, with a charming smile, “but I no longer regard you as a stranger.”
“Madam,” said Challoner, “I perceive I must make you a confession. Although of a very good family—through my mother, indeed, a lineal descendant of the patriot Bruce—I dare not conceal from you that my affairs are deeply, very deeply, involved. I am in debt; my pockets are practically empty; and, in short, I am fallen to that state when a considerable sum of money would prove to many men an irresistible temptation.”
“Do you not see,” returned the young lady, “that by these words you have removed my last hesitation? Take them.” And she thrust the notes into the young man’s hand.
He sat so long, holding them, like a baby at the font, that Miss Fonblanque once more bubbled into laughter.
“Pray,” she said, “hesitate no further; put them in your pocket; and to relieve our position of any shadow of embarrassment, tell me by what name I am to address my knight-errant, for I find myself reduced to the awkwardness of the pronoun.”