"Why! I have hardly time to explain; but I am, as I told you, resolved on righting my old Italian friend, if Heaven will help me, as it ever does help the just when they bestir themselves; and this Mrs Bertram is mixed up in my friend's affairs."
"His! How is that possible?"
Harley rapidly and succinctly explained. Audley listened attentively, with his eyes fixed on the floor, and still seeming to labour under great difficulty of breathing.
At last he answered, "I remember something of this Mrs—Mrs—Bertram. But your inquiries after her would be useless. I think I have heard that she is long since dead; nay, I am sure of it."
"Dead!—that is most unfortunate. But do you know any of her relations or friends? Can you suggest any mode of tracing this packet, if it came to her hands?"
"No."
"And Lady Jane had scarcely any friend that I remember, except my mother, and she knows nothing of this Mrs Bertram. How unlucky! I think I shall advertise. Yet, no. I could only distinguish this Mrs Bertram from any other of the same name, by stating with whom she had gone abroad, and that would catch the attention of Peschiera, and set him to counterwork us."
"And what avails it?" said Egerton. "She whom you seek is no more—no more!" He paused, and went on rapidly—"The packet did not arrive in England till years after her death—was no doubt returned to the post-office—is destroyed long ago."
Harley looked very much disappointed. Egerton went on in a sort of set mechanical voice, as if not thinking of what he said, but speaking from the dry practical mode of reasoning which was habitual to him, and by which the man of the world destroys the hopes of an enthusiast. Then starting up at the sound of the first thundering knock at the street door, he said, "Hark! you must excuse me."
"I leave you, my dear Audley. Are you better now?"