Cunard. A steward had come off the Empress just as he was going on to it, and given this very definite command. He was, so the porter said, “a littlish, mean-looking ’ound of a steward.” Nicholson was a big man. And, though the porter may have based his description of the offending steward on anger, Clement, with a sudden blaze of comprehension, now recognized how well that description fitted the steward who had just tried to turn the little lawyer off the boat. Had that steward tried to keep him[Pg 22] off the boat also? It looked extraordinarily like it. [Pg 22] Thus, though he might have been inclined to scout the whole idea of the gang of rogues who were working to accomplish the undoing of the girl Heloise and her million pounds, as something absurd and unreal, actually the train of circumstances forced him to say limply: “You are rather stunning as well as other things.” IV The little man went on promptly with his hasty and hurtling attack. “I know, stunning and absurd and incredible. It sounds all that, I know. To me it is all that—only, I’ve got to face things as they appear to me and I’ve so little to go on, yet so much. A huge fortune, that foolish girl’s happiness, and all that sort of thing—is at stake....” He seemed anxious to impress Clement with the soundness of his case, and it was now Clement who cried, “But get on with it, man. You haven’t too much time. You’ll have to go ashore very soon. Tell me the facts.” “Facts,” snapped the little man. “The first is she’s going out expressly to find and marry this weak-will, this ne’er-do-well Henry Gunning.” [Pg 23] [Pg 23] “Why? Is she engaged to him?” demanded Clement, with peculiar interest. “Engaged to him. Good gad—rubbish. Sheer quixotery. This is the story: They were brought up together—boy and girl. He was an unpleasant, feckless cub. His people had estates next old Reys. Both of ’em went about as kids. There was a sort of calf love. Both of ’em had it mildly ... nothing else to do in the country for the young but to be calves. Then he did something idiotic, and he was shipped off to Canada. His guardians did it—parents dead then.” “What was it?”
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