Sallie saw how Jasper Slyne\'s face blanched at sight of that very untimely intruder, whose keen eyes seemed to take in the situation there at a glance.
Mr. Jobling had fallen backward into a convenient armchair and, with both hands clapped to his nose, was moaning most piteously. Captain Dove was standing over him, with features inflamed, in a very bellicose posture and glaring at the new-comer, toward whom Slyne had turned inquiringly.
"You\'re—looking for some one, M. Dubois?" Slyne asked, in a tone of polite surprise, which, Sallie knew, was assumed.
"A thousand pardons," returned that individual. "I am indeed looking for some one—whom I thought to find here. I had no intention, however, of intruding upon a lady—" He bowed profusely to Sallie. "It may be," he suggested, "that I have mistaken the number. Is not this the suite 161?"
"One hundred and sixty," Slyne told him, and evidently did not think it worth while to add that the next suite was his own.
"A thousand pardons," repeated M. Dubois, very penitently. "I am too stupid! But mademoiselle will perhaps be so gracious as to forgive me this time."
He bowed to Sallie again and to Slyne, and disappeared, sharply scanning the latter\'s face to the last.
"Who\'s that son of a sea-cook?" snapped Captain Dove, and Mr. Jobling looked wanly up out of one eye.
"A French detective," Slyne answered reflectively. But Sallie felt sure that he was afraid of M. Dubois, and wondered why.
"Well, he has nothing against me that I\'m aware of," the old man declared. "And now—what about this wire? Does it mean that some other fellow has scooped the pool—and that I\'ve had all my trouble for nothing, eh?" He clenched his fist again and shook it in the lawyer\'s face.
"No, no," gasped Mr. Jobling. "Don\'t be so hasty. It makes no difference at all, now that we have Lady Josceline with us. I told you that the American, Carthew, is of no account against her—and how he has ever cropped up again I can\'t conceive. In any case—"
"In any case, you\'d better be off to your room and ring for a bit of beefsteak to doctor that eye with," Slyne interposed in a tone of intense annoyance.
"And I wish to goodness, Dove!" he added savagely, "that you would behave a little more like a reasonable human being and less—"
"Less of your lip, now!" snarled the old man. "And don\'t keep on saying that. Just take it from me again, both of you, that you\'d better not be so slow again in telling me—"
"You didn\'t give me time," Mr. Jobling protested.
Slyne opened the door. "Come on," he urged. "You\'ve got to get your kit packed, Jobling. We\'ll be leaving before very long now."
"Have you made up your mind to come with us, Dove?"
Captain Dove nodded, most emphatically. "I\'ll send word to Brasse and Da Costa at once," he remarked, "and then I\'ll be ready to start whenever you are."
He left the room after Mr. Jobling, and Slyne, in the doorway, looked back at Sallie, the reassuring smile on his lips belied by his cold, calculating eyes.
"And how about you, Sallie?" he asked. "Have you made up your mind? Are you satisfied—so far? Or—would you rather go back to the Olive Branch?
"If you would—I\'ll let you off your promise, even now! And don\'t forget that this will be your last chance to recall it."
"You know I can\'t go back to the Olive Branch, Jasper," she answered slowly. "But—"
He did not give her time to say more. "That\'s settled for good, then," he asserted. "Your promise stands, and I know you\'ll keep it when the time comes—after I\'ve done my part.
"I\'m only sorry I haven\'t been able to get rid of Captain Dove right away, but it won\'t be long now till—You needn\'t worry any more about him. I\'ll see that he behaves better.
"If there\'s anything else I can do for your comfort, you must let me know. And now, I\'ll leave you to your own devices until it\'s time to start on our travels. Better get a rest while you can, eh? We\'ve a very busy week ahead of us."
She saw that he did not intend to tell her any more in the meantime, and was glad to see him go. Then she called Ambrizette in for company, and sat down by the window again, to try to sort out for herself the bewildering tangle that life had once more become within a few hours.
Gazing out across the familiar sea with wistful, far-away eyes, she mused for a time over what Captain Dove had told Mr. Jobling of her history, and strove to piece together with that all she herself could recall of that dim and always more mysterious past out of which she had come to be Captain Dove\'s property, bought and paid for, at a high price, as he had repeated several times.
Her own earliest vague, disconnected, ineffectual memories were all of some dark, savage mountain-country; of endless days of travel; of camp-fires in the cold, and hungry camels squealing for fodder; of the fragrant cinnamon-smell of the steam that came from the cooking-pots.
Before, or, it might have been, after that, she had surely lived on some seashore, in a shimmering white village with narrow, crooked lanes for streets and little flat-roofed houses huddled together among hot sandhills where the suddra grew and lean goats bleated always for their kids.
Then, as if in a very vexing dream, she could almost but never quite see, through the thickening mist of the years, once-familiar faces—white men, with swords, in ragged uniforms, and big brown ones with wicked eyes and long, thin guns, glaring down at her over a high wall, through smoke and fire, and fighting, and the acrid reek of powder....
And there remembrance grew blank altogether, until it connected with Captain Dove, on the deck of a slaving-dhow far out of sight of any land. She had been only a little child when he had carried her up the side of his own ship in his arms, while she laughed gleefully in his face and pulled at his shaggy moustache, but she could still remember some of the incidents of that day.
She had lived on board his successive ships ever since. And ever since, until recently, he had always been very good to her, in his own queer, gruff way. He had always treated her as though she were a child of his own, shielding her, in so far as he could, from even the knowledge of all the evil which he had done up and down the world. She had grown up in the belief that his despotic guardianship was altogether for her good and not to be disputed.
But now—she was no longer a child. And all her old, unquestioning faith in his inherent good intentions, toward her at least, was finally shattered. She knew now that he really looked upon her as a mere chattel, with a cash value—just as if she had been one of the hapless cargo of human cattle confined in the pestiferous hold of the dhow on whose deck he had found her at play. She knew now that he had bought and paid for them as well as her, and sold them again at a fat profit, far across the seas—all but the dumb, deformed black woman whom he had picked from among them to act as her nurse.
And if it did not occur to her to question either his power or his perfect right to dispose of her future also as he might see fit, had not all her experience gone to prove that might is right everywhere, that law and justice are merely additional pretexts devised by the strong for oppressing the weak? She had had to choose between remaining on board the Olive Branch, or paying Jasper Slyne his price for the chance of escape he had offered her in pursuance of his own aims.
She disliked and distrusted Slyne scarcely less than before. But she did not see how she could have chosen otherwise. And, in any case,—it was too late now to revoke the promise she had made him.
She was still afraid to place any faith in the promises he had made her. She had no idea how he had come at his alleged discovery of her real identity. But Mr. Jobling\'s obvious belief in that recurred to her mind, and she fell to wondering timidly what life would be like as Lady Josceline Justice.
Her impressions on that point were very hazy, however, and she had still to puzzle out the problem added by Justin Carthew. But she finally gave up the attempt to solve that at the moment, contenting herself with the tremulous hope that she might soon be on her way toward that dear, unknown, dream-home for which her hungry heart had so often ached.
Of the exorbitant price so soon to be paid for the brief glimpse of happiness Slyne had agreed to allow her, she took no further thought at all. She had already made up her mind to meet that without complaint.
An hour or more later, when Slyne looked in to tell her that it was time to start, she was still seated at the window, gazing out over the steel-grey sea with wistful, far-away eyes.
At his instigation she veiled herself very closely. And he had brought with him a hooded cloak for Ambrizette. No one took any particular notice of the inconspicuous party which presently left the H?tel de Paris in a hired car, as if for an excursion along the coast.
At a station fifty miles away they left the car and caught the night-mail for Paris. Slyne\'s baggage was on board it, in the care of a sullen chauffeur, and there were also berths reserved for them all.
"Did you see any more of Dubois?" Sallie heard Slyne ask the man, who shook his head indifferently in reply.
The long night-journey passed without other incident than a dispute between Captain Dove and the sleeping-car attendant, which raged until Slyne threatened to have the train stopped at the next station and send for the police. And the sun was shining brightly when they reached Paris.
Mr. Jobling went straight on to London, but Slyne took Sallie and Captain Dove to a quiet but expensive hotel, where they remained for a few days, which passed in a perfect whirl of novelty and excitement for her. And when they in their turn crossed the Channel, she had for baggage at least a dozen new trunks containing the choicest spoils of the Rue de la Paix. Slyne had pooh-poohed all her timid protests against his lavish expenditure on her account, and had also provided for Captain Dove and Ambrizette in their degree. He had evidently a fortune at his disposal, and was bent on showing her how generous he could be.
He was also unostentatiously displaying other good qualities which had all gone to make those days pass very pleasantly for her. She could not fail to appreciate the courtesy and consideration which he consistently showed her now. His patience with Captain Dove, a trying companion at the best of times and doubly troublesome idle, more than once made her wonder whether he could be the same Jasper Slyne she had known on the Olive Branch. Prosperity seemed to have improved him almost beyond recognition.
He had a cabin at her disposal on the Calais-Dover steamer but she stayed on deck throughout the brief passage, glad to breathe the salt sea-air again, while he entertained her with descriptions of London and she watched the twinkling lights that were guiding her home.
And then came London itself, at last, somewhat grey, and cold, and disconsolate-looking on a wet winter morning.
But after breakfast in a cosy suite at the Savoy, a blink of sunshine along the Embankment helped to better that first hasty impression. And then Slyne took Captain Dove and her in a taxicab along the thronged and bustling Strand to Mr. Jobling\'s office in Chancery Lane.
They got out in front of a dingy building not very far from Cursitor Street. It was raining again, and Sallie, looking up and down the narrow, turbid thoroughfare, felt glad that she did not need to live there.
Indoors, the atmosphere was scarcely less depressing. A dismal passage led toward a dark stairway, up which they had to climb flight after flight to reach at last a dusty, ill-smelling, gas-lighted room, inhabited only by a shabby, shock-headed hobbledehoy of uncertain age and unprepossessing appearance, perched on a preposterously high stool at a still higher desk, behind a cage-like partition.
"I want to see Mr. Jobling, at once," Slyne announced to him. And Mr. Jobling\'s "managing clerk" looked............