Hardyman lost all control over himself.
“You scoundrel!” he cried, “have you been prying into my private affairs? Is it your business to know what I did in France?”
“Is it your vengeance on a woman to refuse to tell her the number of a bank-note?” Moody rejoined, firmly.
That answer forced its way, through Hardyman’s anger, to Hardyman’s sense of honor. He rose and advanced to Moody. For a moment the two men faced each other in silence. “You’re a bold fellow,” said Hardyman, with a sudden change from anger to irony. “I’ll do the lady justice. I’ll look at my pocketbook.”
He put his hand into the breast-pocket of his coat; he searched his other pockets; he turned over the objects on his writing-table. The book was gone.
Moody watched him with a feeling of despair. “Oh! Mr. Hardyman, don’t say you have lost your pocketbook!”
He sat down again at his desk, with sullen submission to the new disaster. “All I can say is you’re at liberty to look for it,” he replied. “I must have dropped it somewhere.” He turned impatiently to the foreman, “Now then! What is the next check wanted? I shall go mad if I wait in this damned place much longer!”
Moody left him, and found his way to the servants’ offices. “Mr. Hardyman has lost his pocketbook,” he said. “Look for it, indoors and out—on the lawn, and in the tent. Ten pounds reward for the man who finds it!”
Servants and waiters instantly dispersed, eager for the promised reward. The men who pursued the search outside the cottage divided their forces. Some of them examined the lawn and the flower-beds. Others went straight to the empty tent. These last were too completely absorbed in pursuing the object in view to notice that they disturbed a dog, eating a stolen lunch of his own from the morsels left on the plates. The dog slunk away under the canvas when the men came in, waited in hiding until they had gone, then returned to the tent, and went on with his luncheon.
Moody hastened back to the part of the grounds (close to the shrubbery) in which Isabel was waiting his return.