“Not a single line.”
“So much the better. Now, what you must do is to disappear from the scene for awhile. You can run down to Cornwall and stay with your uncle for a week or two.”
“But,” urged Launce, “I can’t, with any show of decency, leave home without either calling on, or writing to Ethel, and giving some more or less plausible excuse for my absence.”
“You must neither call nor write,” said his father. “You had better start by the three o’clock train this afternoon, and have your right wrist bound up as if the result of a sprain. I will make all needful excuses for you.”
Launce Keymer was one of that numerous class of young men who can do with an unlimited quantity of holidays, and his father’s suggestion seemed to him in every way an admirable one. Accordingly, the three o’clock train carried him away in due course, with his wrist bound up in accordance with his father’s directions; but by the time St. Oswyth’s had been left half-a-dozen miles behind, the bandage was unrolled and flung out of the carriage window.
In the course of the same afternoon a note, addressed to “Miss Thursby,” was delivered at Vale View. In it Mr. Keymer senior begged to inform that lady, that, in consequence of his son having been called away by telegram owing to the serious illness of a near relative, he—Launce—would not be able to dine at Vale View that day, as promised. His son would himself have written had he not unfortunately happened to sprain his wrist so severely that it would be impossible for him to hold a pen for some time to come.
The note made no mention of Ethel, purposely leaving it an open question whether, before quitting home, Launce had, or had not, confided to his father the fact of his engagement.
Later in the day Mr. Keymer senior made it his business to call on his cousin, the lawyer’s clerk. To him he said: “I have reason to believe that the Miss Thursbys of Vale View have lost the greater part, if not the whole, of their fortune. What I want you to do is, to keep your eyes and ears open and pick up whatever scraps of information may come in your way tending to prove either the truth or falsity of the rumour which has reached me.”
The brewer argued with himself that if the news conveyed by the letter which Launce had read should prove to be correct, the sisters would go to his cousin’s employer, as their local man of business, and seek his advice in the matter—which, some few days later, was precisely what they did.