Why I acted in this manner I was at a loss to determine. My anxiety for the valise almost amounted to pain; and yet here was the cause for worry removed, and I would not even trouble myself to walk a few hundred yards to the hotel to thank the lady for returning with it, which, as a gentleman, I was bound to do at any cost as to personal discomfort.
“Some frouzy old maid,” suggested Whiffler.
“Probably; or a strong-minded female doing Wicklow on a geological survey,” I added.
When I got back to the hotel, which might have been an hour or so subsequently, I found my portmanteau safely deposited in my room.
“Where is this lady, until I—”
“She’s gone, sir,” interrupted the waiter in a reproachful tone, “but she towld me for to give you this bit av’ a note,” handing me a piece of paper folded cocked-hat fashion.
I opened it.
“I have two regrets,” it said—the geologist’s handwriting was exquisitely feminine—“one, that I was inadvertently the cause of inconvenience; and the other, that I was denied the opportunity of claiming the portmanteau, as I imagine that I recognize in it one which I lost about eight months ago during a railway journey to the north.”
I was literally stunned. I gazed from the letter to the now astonished waiter, and back from his vacant countenance to the three-cornered billet, which, alas! told so much and yet so little. It bore no name, no initial, no monogram, no clue.
“Describe this lady’s appearance!” I shouted, clutching the waiter by his greasy collar, and imparting to him no very delicate shake.