Mrs. Bowmore drew back the bolts before the servants could help her. “Where is Charlotte?” she cried; seeing Percy alone on the doorstep.
“Gone!” Percy answered furiously. “Eloped to Paris with Captain Bervie! Read her own confession. They were just sending the messenger with it, when I reached the house.”
He handed a note to Mrs. Bowmore, and turned aside to speak to her husband while she read it. Charlotte wrote to her mother very briefly; promising to explain everything on her return. In the meantime, she had left home under careful protection—she had a lady for her companion on the journey—and she would write again from Paris. So the letter, evidently written in great haste, began and ended.
Percy took Mr. Bowmore to the window, and pointed to a carriage and four horses waiting at the garden-gate.
“Do you come with me, and back me with your authority as her father?” he asked, sternly. “Or do you leave me to go alone?”
Mr. Bowmore was famous among his admirers for his “happy replies.” He made one now.
“I am not Brutus,” he said. “I am only Bowmore. My daughter before everything. Fetch my traveling-bag.”
While the travelers’ bags were being placed in the chaise, Mr. Bowmore was struck by an idea.
He produced from his coat-pocket a roll of many papers thickly covered with writing. On the blank leaf in which they were tied up, he wrote in the largest letters: “Frightful domestic calamity! Vice-President Bowmore obliged to leave England! Welfare of a beloved daughter! His speech will be read at the meeting by Secretary Joskin, of the Club. (Private to Joskin. Have these lines printed and posted everywhere. And, when you read my speech, for God’s sake don’t drop your voice at the ends of the sentences.)”
He threw down the pen, and embraced Mrs. Bowmore in the most summary manner. The poor woman was ordered to send the roll of paper to the Club, without a word to comfort and sustain her from her husband’s lips. Percy spoke to her hopefully and kindly, as he kissed her cheek at parting.