XXXI.
There was nothing for Ray to do but to accept his dismissal. He got himself stealthily down stairs and out of the house, but he could not leave it. He walked up and down before it, doubting whether he ought not to ring and try to get in again. When he made up his mind to this he saw that the front windows were dark. That decided him to go home.
He did not sleep, and the next morning he made an early errand to the publishers’. He saw Peace bent over her work in Mr. Chapley’s room. He longed to go and speak to her, and assure himself from her own words that all was well; but he had no right to do that, and with the first stress of his anxiety abated, he went to lay the cause of it before Kane.
“It was all a mere chance that I should know of this; but I thought you ought to know,” he explained.
“Yes, certainly,” said Kane; but he was less moved than Ray had expected, or else he showed his emotion less. “Hughes is not a fool, whatever Denton is; this sort of thing must have been going on a good while, and he’s got the measure of it. I’ll speak to Chapley about it. They mustn’t be left altogether to themselves with it.”
As the days began to go by, and Ray saw Peace constantly in her place at the publishers’, his unselfish anxiety yielded to the question of his own relation to her, and how he should make confession and reparation. He went to Kane in this trouble, as in the other, after he had fought off the necessity as long as he could, but they spoke of the other trouble first.
Then Ray said, with the effort to say it casually, “I don’t think I told you that the great mystery about my manuscript had been solved.” Kane could not remember at once what the mystery was, and Ray was forced to add, “It seems that the unknown friend who wouldn’t look twice at my book was—Miss Hughes.”
Kane said, after a moment, “Oh!” and then, as if it should be a very natural thing, he asked, “How did you find that out?”
“She got Mr. Brandreth to tell me it wasn’t you, as soon as she knew that I had suspected you.”
“Of course. Did he tell you who it was?”