Part 8 (1/2)

”Oh, sir, you shouldn't speak to me--not here. Anyone might see you.

Pray go. I know I shall get you into trouble, and you so kind!”

These words were spoken in a rapid, frightened whisper, and with an apprehensive glance at the intermittent stream of carriages pa.s.sing within a few yards of them. Rainham shrugged his shoulders pitifully, but found it rather difficult to say anything. Certainly, his reputation was running a risk, and he felt that his indifference was somewhat exceptional.

”I'm sorry to say I've got no news for you,” he said presently, after a silent pause, during which he had observed that the wide-eyed child was really far prettier than many who (as he had been a.s.sured by the complacent matrons who exhibited them) were ”little cherubs,” and that it was as scrupulously cared for as the little cherubs, even in their exhibition array. ”I haven't been able to discover anything; but you mustn't despair, we shall find him sooner or later.”

The girl glanced at him irresolutely, and then dropped her eyes again, leaning over the child.

”It's no good, sir,” she said. ”I'm only sorry to have given you so much trouble already. He won't come back--he's tired of me. He could find me if he wanted to, and watching and hunting for him like this would only set him more and more against me.”

Rainham, as he listened to her, rather puzzled by her sudden change of att.i.tude since their last interview, was forced to admit mentally that her reasoning, if it lacked spontaneity, was, at all events, indisputably sound; and while he found himself doubting whether the victim was not better versed in worldliness than he had at first suspected, he still felt a curious reluctance which, though he was half ashamed of his delicacy, prevented him from suggesting that, sentimental reasons apart, the betrayer still ought to be discovered, if only in order to force him to provide for the maintenance of his child. It hardly, perhaps, occurred to him that he, after all, would be the person who would suffer most, and he certainly did not for an instant credit the girl with any ulterior designs upon his purse.

”Oh, I don't know,” he said feebly. ”Perhaps he does not know where you are. And I dare say, if he saw the child----”

”The child?” echoed the woman bitterly. ”That's just the worst of it!”

Rainham sighed, forced again to acknowledge his lower standing in the wisdom of the world. He would have given a great deal to be able to get up and go.

”Then you don't want me to employ a detective, or to advertise, or--or to make an appeal to the editor of the _Outcry_?”

Mrs. Crichton seemed to welcome the opportunity afforded by this direct questioning.

”No,” she said, ”I think it would be better not. I don't want to seem ungrateful, sir--and I'm sure I thank you very, very much for all you have done for me--but I think you had better take no more trouble about it. If I can get work I shall do all right.”

In spite of the girl's evident attempt to pull herself together, her voice was less brave than her words, and they conveyed but little a.s.surance to the listener. He shrugged his shoulders somewhat impatiently: the interview was beginning to tell upon his nerves.

”Of course, it's for you to decide, and I suppose you have thought it well out, and have good reason for this alteration of purpose.

But when you talk about work----?”

He finished his sentence with a note of inquiry and a half apologetic glance at her slight form and frail, white fingers.

”I haven't always been a model,” she explained with some dignity.

”Would to G.o.d I never had! I can sew better than most, and I can work a type-machine. That's what I used to do before he came. But type-writing work isn't so easy to get as it was, and I am out of practice.”

It occurred to him for a moment to ask the girl whether she could remember sitting for Mr. Lightmark, but he felt that d.i.c.k might resent the introduction of his name; and, remembering that she had told him that, for a time, before her health gave way, her artist patrons had been numerous, he dismissed the idea as not likely to be profitable.

As they spoke, she with her mournful eyes turned on Rainham's sympathetic face, he absently following the movements of the child as it laboriously raised a small edifice of gravel-stones on the seat between them, neither of them noticed the severely correct figure in the frock-coat and immaculate hat who pa.s.sed close behind with observant eyegla.s.s fixed upon the little group, and with an air which, after the first flush of open-mouthed surprise, was eloquently expressive of regretful indignation and the highest motives.

Charles Sylvester continued his walk for a distance of about fifty paces, and then seated himself in a position to command a view of the persons in whom he was interested.

”I don't like watching Rainham like this,” he said to himself; ”but it's a duty which I owe to society.”

That the man was Rainham was as obvious as that the woman he was talking to was of a far lower rank in life than his own. And then there was the child!

”By Jove!” said Sylvester sententiously, ”it's worse than I thought.

People really ought to be warned. I suppose it's that girl he was talking about at the studio the other day; and he tried to s.h.i.+ft her on to Lightmark. What a hypocrite the man must be!”