“One of the briefless. I did not choose the profession, I assure you. Like my first frock, it was chosen for me, and I was thrust into it bon gré mal gré. I’ll tell you who I am and what I am. I have told my friend Crosse already.” And he summed up the case, much in the same words as he had addressed to me.
Finche was impressed by the mention of the title, and deeply interested in a detailed description of the Moat.
“I am happy to meet you, sir, and should be glad to visit Sir Harvey Price at Holten Moat when I go to England next year, sir. Do you purpose taking much value out of this country, sir?”
Price actually winked at me, and that wink spoke the following words:
“I mean to take five hundred thousand dollars if I can.”
A bell sounded.
“Supper, gentlemen!” said Finche. “Let us get in. No ceremony here, Mr. Price. We have no Moats for three hundred years in our family, although we see them every day in our neighbor’s eye—ha! ha!”
It would never do to have this pickpocket, for aught I knew to the contrary, enter beneath my friend’s roof under the very peculiar circumstances of the case. Had he been an ordinary travelling acquaintance it would not have much mattered, but a penniless adventurer bent upon matrimonial designs—never!
“Mr. Price and I are going back to the Ocean House,” I said in my sternest tone, and in a manner so marked as to bear but the one interpretation.
“What do I hear, Mr. Crosse?” exclaimed Miss Finche, emerging from the interior, arrayed in a bewitching toilette of fleecy white and delicate lilac.