"That is all. I got a letter from Mr. Chambers the evening you left London saying you were going that evening to Nice. You had been called to the Bar, and had done all that I wanted you to do, so I made Mrs. O'Flaherty accompany me, and followed you the next night. We heard about the ball from an old colonel whom she knows here, and I made him get us tickets for it, and went to it on the chance of seeing you."
"And what would you have done if I had ceased to care for you?"
"Well, that I suppose would have depended on what I thought of you. I had lived without you for five years, and if you had changed into a nasty, unamiable creature I could have done without you for the rest of my life. But then nice people don't change into nasty people any more than sapphires or diamonds change into bits of flint or granite."
"You have an answer for everything," I said, laughing.
"Yes," she replied, "that is what Mr. Chambers used to say. But talking about Mr. Chambers reminds me that the letter you got from him and Mr. Furnival was all a piece of nonsense. The £2,000 a year is secured to you in the marriage settlement, and you would not have forfeited anything if you had insisted on knowing who I was. My object was to put myself out of your mind as much as possible by making you think that you would never see me again, so that you might attend to your books, and fit yourself for the world, and let me know your real opinion of me when you were competent to form one. And now I must get back, for Mrs. O'Flaherty is returning to London this evening."
"So soon!" I cried involuntarily, in a tone of pleasurable surprise.
"Now stop that," she said. "Mrs. O'Flaherty is a very good woman indeed, and you have not got rid of her yet, for we are going to accompany her as far as Cannes, unless you prefer to stop here with Mr. Mervin."
"No, thank you," I said. "I shall go to Cannes."
We left Nice by an evening train. Mervin was at Monaco, where he usually passed his day; and as he spent most of his time at Monaco, and had several friends in Nice, I did not feel as much compunction as I might otherwise have felt in leaving a letter for him, which he would get on his return at about ten o'clock, saying that I had been taken away from Nice by urgent business, the nature of which he would learn in due course if he watched the matrimonial advertisements in the Times. We got out of the train at Cannes, leaving Mrs. O'Flaherty to go on to Marseilles en route for London.
As we drove up to the hotel I took out my purse to pay the fare.