She glanced round, cautiously; and lowered her voice.
"But, oh, my goodness, if ever he should find out the means we took to persuade them to go, there will be the very mischief to pay: he will tear us to pieces! You know how impetuous and proud he is; and then those people have appealed to him in a curious way—their loneliness—their poverty—and their—— Yes, I will admit it—certain personal qualities and characteristics. I don't deny it; any more than I would deny that the girl was extremely pretty, and the old man picturesque, and even well-mannered and dignified in his way. All the more dangerous—the pair of them. Well, now they are gone, I breathe more freely. While they were here, no argument was of any avail. Vin looked into the girl's appealing face—and everything was refuted. And at all events we can say this to our own conscience—that we have done them no harm. We are not mediæval tyrants; we have not flung the venerable patriot and the innocent maiden into a dungeon, to say nothing of breaking their bones on a rack. The venerable patriot and the innocent maiden, I have no doubt, consider themselves remarkably well off. And that reminds me that Harland Harris, although he is of opinion that all property should be under social control——"
"Not all property, my dear Madge," said Lord Musselburgh, politely. "He would say that all property should be under social control—except his property."
"At all events, it seems to me that he occasionally finds it pretty convenient to have plenty of money at his own individual command. Why, for him to denounce the accumulation of capital," she continued, with a pretty scorn, "when no one makes more ostentatious use of the power of money! Is there a single thing he denies himself—one single thing that is only possible to him through his being a man of great wealth? I shouldn't wonder if, when he dies, he leaves instructions to have the electric light turned on into his coffin, just in case he should wake up and want to press the knob."
"Come, come, Madge," said Musselburgh. "Be generous. A man cannot always practice what he preaches. You must grant him the privilege of sighing for an ideal."
"Harland Harris sighing for an ideal," said Mrs. Ellison, with something of feminine spite, "would make a capital subject for an imaginative picture by Watts—if my dear brother-in-law weren't rather stout, and wore a black frock-coat."
Meanwhile, Vincent returned to London, and renewed his solitary search; it was the only thing he felt fit for; all other employments had no meaning for him, were impossible. But, as day by day passed, he became more and more convinced that they must have left London: he knew their familiar haunts so well, and their habits, that he was certain he must have encountered them somewhere if they were still within the great city. And here was the New Year drawing nigh, when friends far separated recalled themselves to each other's memory, with hopes and good wishes for the coming time. It seemed to him that he would not have felt this loneliness so much, if only he had known that Maisrie was in this or that definite place—in Madrid—in Venice—in Rome—or even in some huge steamship ploughing its way across the wide Atlantic.
But a startling surprise was at hand. About half-past ten on the last night of the old year a note was brought upstairs to him by a servant. His face grew suddenly pale when he saw the handwriting, which he instantly recognised.
"Who brought this?" he said, breathlessly.
"A man, sir."