"No?" said he, and then, rather hesitatingly, for it was dangerous ground, he added, "Wasn't it strange that, with you singing at those public concerts in Glasgow, Lionel should never have seen your name in the papers—should never have guessed where you were?"
"I took another name—Signorina Teresa I was," Nina said, simply.
"So you are not going back to Glasgow?" he asked again.
"No. The concert season is about over there. Besides," she added, rather sadly, "I have been—a little—a little homesick. The people there were very kind to me, but I was much alone. So now—when Lionel is over the worst of the fever—when he promises to get well—when you say to me I can be of no more use—then I return to Naples to my friends."
"Oh, to Naples? But what to do there?" he made bold to ask.
"Ah, who knows?" said Nina, in so low a voice that he could hardly hear.
He put her safely into a four-wheeled cab; then went back
to Lionel's rooms to see that all arrangements were made for the night; finally he set out for his own chambers in Westminster. No, it had not been a dawdling day for him at all; on the contrary, he had not had time to glance at a single newspaper, and now, as he got some hot drink for himself and lit his pipe and hauled in an easy-chair to the fire, he thought he would look over the evening journals. And about the first paragraph he saw was headed, "Death of Sir Barrington Miles, M.P." Well, it was a bit of a coincidence, he considered; nothing more; the £1100 had been paid, and, apart from that circumstance, it must be confessed, his interest in the Miles family was of the slightest. Only he wondered what the young man was doing in Paris, with his father so near the point of death.