The door was suddenly thrown open, and the doctor fairly leaped to his feet with ill-disguised alarm. It was only the bar-maid, to ask if he had rung. He had not done so, and as it was perfectly understood that I paid for all on these occasions, that fact alone was abundantly conclusive as to the disordered state of his intellect. He now ordered brandy and water, a pipe, and a screw of tobacco. These ministrants to a mind disturbed somewhat calmed the doctor's excitement, and his cunning gray eyes soon brightly twinkled again through a haze of curling smoke.
'Did you notice,' he resumed, 'a female sitting in the bar? She knows you.'
'A young, intelligent-looking girl. Yes. Who is she?'
'Young!' replied Lee, evasively, I thought. 'Well, it's true she is young in years, but not in experience—in suffering, poor girl, as I can bear witness.'
'There are, indeed, but faint indications of the mirth and lightness of youth or childhood in those timid, apprehensive eyes of hers.'
'She never had a childhood. Girls of her condition seldom have. Her father's booked for the next world, and by an early stage too, unless he mends his manners, and that I hardly see how he's to do. The girl's been to Lymington to see after a place. Can't have it. Her father's character is against her. Unfortunate; for she's a good girl.'
'I am sorry for her. But come, to business. How about the matter you wot of?'
'Here are all the particulars,' answered Lee, with an easy transition from a sentimental to a common-sense, business-like tone, and at the same time unscrewing the lid of a tortoise-shell tobacco-box, and taking a folded paper from it. 'I keep these matters generally here; for if I were to drop such an article—just now, especially—I might as well be hung out to dry at once.'
I glanced over the paper. 'Place, date, hour correct, and thoroughly to be depended upon you say, eh?'
'Correct as Cocker, I'll answer for it. It would be a spicy run for them, if there were no man-traps in the way.'