shabby
and not very wise as usual. She was not ashamed; though for a moment
she had been glad he had missed her father; now she told herself it
did not matter either way. He knew what she was and what her people
were; what did it matter if he realised it a little more? They were
not of his sort, it was no good pretending for a moment that they
were. His sort! She laughed silently at the thought. The girls of his
sort eating steak and onions in a back bedroom with Johnny Gillat!
Caring for Johnny as she cared, liking to sit with him in the pokey
little room while he smoked Dutch cigars; not doing it out of kindness
of heart and charity, but finding personal pleasure in it and a sense
of home-coming! If Rawson-Clew had come that evening while they were
at supper, or while she cured the smoky fire or mended the blind, or
while they sipped black coffee out of earthenware breakfast-cups and
talked of her father's delinquencies! It would not have mattered; he
knew she was of the stoke-hole--she had told him so--and not like the
accomplished girls whom he usually met--who could not have got him the
explosive!

She dropped her stocking to take the wide-necked bottle in her hands,
deciding now how best to send it. It must go by post, in a good-sized
wooden box, tightly packed, with a great deal of damp straw and wool;
it ought to be safe that way. She would send it to the club address,
it was fortunate she had it; but not yet, not until her own plans were
clearer. It was just possible he might suspect her; it was hardly
likely, but it was always as well to provide against remote
contingencies, for if he tried and succeeded in verifying the
suspicion everything would be spoiled. He had made sensible efforts to
find her before, he might make equally sensible and more successful
ones again, unless she left a way of escape clear for herself.
Accordingly, so she determined, the explosive should not go yet,
thought it had better be packed ready. She would get a box and packing
to-morrow; to-night she could only copy the formula. She did this,
printing it carefully on a strip of paper which she put on the bottle
and coated with wax from her candle. She knew Herr Van de Greutz waxed
labels sometimes to preserve them from the damp, so she felt sure the
formula would be safe however wet she might make the packing.

The next day she went to the lawyer's office and heard all about the
legacy and what she must do to prove her own identity