"She received letters from her family," Mijnheer said sturdily, "not frequently, but occasionally; there was not, I think, any quarrel or disagreement. She must certainly have set out to return home last night. If not, and if she had nowhere to go, why should she leave as she did yesterday? We did not say 'go!' we were content that she should remain several days, until her arrangements could be made."
"She might not have cared for that," Rawson-Clew suggested; "if you insinuated to her the sort of things you did to me; women do not like that, as a rule, you know."
All the same, as he said this, he could not help thinking Mijnheer right; Julia must have had somewhere to go. Her dignity and feelings were not of the order to lose sight of essentials in details, or to demand unreasonable sacrifice of common sense. She must have had some destination in view when she left the Van Heigens yesterday, and, as far as he could see, there was no destination open to her but home.
Mijnheer was firmly of this opinion, although, now that a question about it had been suggested to him, he wished he had made sure before the girl left. Of course, her plans and destination were no business of his—she might even have refused to give information about them on that account; he had dismissed her in disgrace, what she did next was not his concern. But in spite of her bad behaviour he had liked her; and though his notions of propriety, and consequent condemnation of her, had undergone no change, he was kind-heartedly anxious she should come to no harm. Her words about some good people making the merely indiscreet into sinners came back to him, but he would not apply them; Julia had gone home, he was sure of it, and a good thing too; the Englishman with the quiet voice and the grand manner could not follow her there to her detriment. Though, to be sure, it was strange that such a man as he should want to; he was not the kind of person Mijnheer had expected the partner in the escapade to be; truly the English were a strange people, very strange. His wife agreed with him on that point; they often said so afterwards—in fact, whenever they thought of the disgraced companion, who was such an excellent cook.
As for Rawson-Clew, he returned to England; there was nothing to keep him longer in Holland. But as he was still not sure how Julia's "capital arrangement" was going to be worked out, and was determined to bear his share of the burden, he decided to go to Marbridge on an early opportunity.
The opportunity did not occur quite so soon as he expected; several things intervened, so that he had been home more than a week before he was able to fulfil his intention. Marbridge lies in the west country, some considerable distance from London; Rawson-Clew did not reach it till the afternoon, at an hour devoted by the Polkingtons most exclusively to things social. It is to be feared, however, that he did not consider the Polkingtons collectively at all; it was Julia, and Julia alone, of whom he was thinking when he knocked at the door of No. 27 East Street.
The door was opened by a different sort of servant from the one who had opened it to him the last time he came; rather a smart-looking girl she was, with her answers quite ready.
"Miss Julia Polkington was not at home," she said, and, in answer to his inquiry when she was expected, informed him that she did not know.
"There is no talk of her coming home, sir," she said; "she is abroad, I think; she has been gone some time."
"Since when?"