'I daresay I have been there—years ago. Why?'
'Oh! you haven't been there lately, have you?'
'Not lately—not for forty years, or some such inconsiderable period. Why?'
'I thought you might yourself have met Mr. Edmund Gray—been to his Chambers, perhaps.'
Mr. Dering sat upright and laid his hand upon his letters. 'Checkley,' he said, 'I am always willing to make allowance for people in mental distress, but I think I have made allowance enough. Come to the point. Have you lost any money?'
'No—no; not so bad as that—but bad enough. No, I couldn't afford to lose money. I haven't got enough to spare any. But I got a shock—a kind of stroke—partly because of the man I met, and partly because of the person with him.'
'Oh! who was that? Are we arriving at something?'
'I hadn't told you that. The person who was sitting at the open window with him, who came down-stairs with him, and walked out of the Square with him, was no other than your own ward, Miss Elsie Arundel herself!'
'Oh! why not?' asked Mr. Dering carelessly. 'She told me yesterday, was it? that she knows him.'
'If it had been anyone else she was with,' he replied, mixing up his grammar—'if it had been anyone else who was with her—I wouldn't have been surprised! But to see the two together. That gave me a turn that I can't get over.'