That she was sorely puzzled at her father’s rapid journeys to and fro across Europe without any apparent reason, of the strange assortment of his friends and the secrecy in which he so often met them, I had long ago observed.
The truth was that I had fallen deeply in love with the sweet dainty girl whose father was the most audacious and cunning crook the modern world had produced. I believed, on account of the small confidence we had exchanged, that Lola, on her part, did not regard me with actual disfavor.
“When will your father be back, do you think?” I asked her as she lounged upon a settee with a big orange silk cushion behind her. She looked very sweet. She wore a pretty but very simple dance-frock of flame-colored ninon, in which I had seen her at the Carlton on the night when I set out to meet the man Tarrant and was so nearly caught.
I had given her a cigarette, and we were smoking together cosily—Duperré and his wife being somewhere in the great old house. I think Duperré was, after all, a sportsman, even though he was a practiced crook, for on that night he and his wife allowed me to be alone with Lola.
“Do you know a friend of your father, an old man named Tarrant?” I asked her suddenly.
“Tarrant—Morley Tarrant?” she asked. “Oh! yes. He’s such a funny old fellow. Three years ago he often used to visit us when we lived in Biarritz, but I haven’t seen him since.”
“Who is he?”
“He was the manager of the branch of the Crédit Foncier. He is French, though he bears an English name.”
“French! But he speaks English!” I remarked.
“Of course. His mother was English. He was once employed by Morgan’s in Paris, I believe, but I haven’t seen him lately. Father said one day at table that the old fellow had overstepped the mark and owing to some defalcations had gone to prison. I was sorry. What do you know of him?”