"Oh!"
"And a lady."
Lord Jocelyn said nothing.
"A lady." Harry repeated the words, to show that he knew what he was saying. "But it is no use. She won't listen to me."
"That is more remarkable than your two last statements. Many men have fallen in love with dressmakers, some dressmakers have acquired partially the manners of a lady; but that any dressmaker should refuse the honorable attentions of a handsome young fellow like you, and a gentleman, is inconceivable."
"A cabinet-maker, not a gentleman. But do not let us talk of her, if you please."
Then Lord Jocelyn proceeded, with such eloquence as was at his command, to draw a picture of what he was throwing away compared with what he was accepting. There was a universal feeling, he assured his ward, of sympathy with him: everybody felt that it was rough on such a man as himself to find that he was not of illustrious descent; he would take his old place in society; all his old friends would welcome him back among them, with much more to the same purpose.
It was four o'clock in the morning when their conversation ended and Lord Jocelyn went to bed sorrowful, promising to renew his arguments in the morning. As soon as he was gone, Harry went to his own room and put together a few little trifles belonging to the past which he thought he should like. Then he wrote a letter of farewell to his guardian, promising to report himself from time to time, with a few words of gratitude and affection. And then he stole quietly down the stairs and found himself in the open street. Like a school-boy, he had run away.
There was nobody left in the streets. Half-past four in the morning is almost the quietest time of any; even the burglar has gone home, and it is too early for anything but the market-garden carts on their way to Covent Garden. He strode down Piccadilly and across the silent Leicester Square into the Strand. He passed through that remarkable thoroughfare, and, by way of Fleet Street, where even the newspaper offices were deserted, the leader-writers and the editor and the subeditors all gone home to bed, to St. Paul's. It was then a little after five, and there was already a stir. An occasional footfall along the principal streets. By the time he got to the Whitechapel Road there were a good many up and about, and before he reached Stepney Green the day's work was beginning. The night had gone and the sun was rising, for it was six o'clock and a cloudless morning. At ten he presented himself once more at the accountant's office.
"Well?" asked the chief.