od,
and soon satisfied her that there was no danger of Mr. James Smith's
first wife laying any claim to him. After hearing that, she joined me
in persuading him to do his duty, and said she pitied your mistress from
the bottom of her heart. With her influence to back me, I had no great
fear of our man changing his mind. I had the door watched that night,
however, so as to make quite sure of him. The next morning he was ready
to time when I called, and a quarter of an hour after that we were off
together for the north road. We made the journey with post-horses, being
afraid of chance passengers, you know, in public conveyances. On the way
down, Mr. James Smith and I got on as comfortably together as if we had
been a pair of old friends. I told the story of our tracing him to the
north of Scotland, and he gave me the particulars, in return, of his
bolting from Darrock Hall. They are rather amusing, William; would you
like to hear them?"

I told Mr. Dark that he had anticipated the very question I was about to
ask him.

"Well," he said, "this is how it was: To begin at the beginning, our man
really took Mrs. Smith, Number Two, to the Mediterranean, as we heard.
He sailed up the Spanish coast, and, after short trips ashore, stopped
at a seaside place in France called Cannes. There he saw a house and
grounds to be sold which took his fancy as a nice retired place to keep
Number Two in. Nothing particular was wanted but the money to buy it;
and, not having the little amount in his own possession, Mr. James Smith
makes a virtue of necessity, and goes back overland to his wife with
private designs on her purse-strings. Number Two, who objects to be left
behind, goes with him as far as London. There he trumps up the first
story that comes into his head about rents in the country, and a house
in Lincolnshire that is too damp for her to trust herself in; and so,
leaving her for a few days in London, starts boldly for Darrock Hall.
His notion was to wheedle your mistress out of the money by good
behavior; but it seems he started badly by quarreling with her about a
fiddle-playing parson--"

"Yes, yes, I know all about that part of the story," I broke in, seeing
by Mr. Dark's manner that he was likely to speak both ignorantly and
impertinently of my mistress's unlucky friend ship for Mr. Meeke. "Go
on to the time when I left my master alone in the Red Room, and tell me
what he did between midnight and nine the next morning."

"