CHAPTER VIII
Second interview with Mr. Septimus Lorton. But now the tables are turned. A pitiful exhibition. My father demands guarantees. He will write a letter to Mrs. Chrysostom Lorton. My father’s ordeal. When it was dark.
Save that it became the means so strangely selected for my early entrance into Xtian commerce, I do not propose to linger over the comparatively brief but effective interview that ensued. At first refused admission, the words Greenwich Park sent as a message by the servant sufficed to bring Mr. Lorton hastily but reluctantly and unaccompanied to the front door. From there he conveyed us to one of the smaller and more distant schoolrooms, and it soon became obvious, in spite of his tentative denials, and even more despicable evasions, that my father and myself were the complete masters of the situation. It was true, of course, that he tried to temporize with the pathetic bravado of the exposed sinner.
“But even if it were the case,” he said, “which I am not prepared to admit, that I was in Greenwich Park with Mrs. Chrysostom, do you suppose that, were I to deny it, my brother would believe you for a moment?”
Fulfilled as he was with a Xtian indignation, my father was unable to suppress a smile.
“I imagine that at least,” he said, “he would be interested in my son’s knowledge that she was supposed to be shopping in Kensington.”
Mr. Septimus Lorton protruded the tip of his tongue in a vain endeavour to moisten his lips.
“And he would also be interested,” I said, “to meet the lame newspaper-seller from whom she obtained change for ten shillings.”
My father nodded.
“That cannot often happen,” he said, “and my son tells me that the man picked up one of her gloves.”