My Lady's Money

Making his way silently through the group of visitors—every one of whom had been informed of what had happened by his sister—with his head down and his lips fast closed, he entered the parlor and rang the bell which communicated with his foreman's rooms at the stables.

"You know that I am going abroad on business?" he said, when the man appeared.

"Yes, sir."

"I am going to-day—going by the night train to Dover. Order the horse to be put to instantly in the dogcart. Is there anything wanted before I am off?"

The inexorable necessities of business asserted their claims through the obedient medium of the foreman. Chafing at the delay, Hardyman was obliged to sit at his desk, signing checks and passing accounts, with the dogcart waiting in the stable yard.

A knock at the door startled him in the middle of his work. "Come in," he called out sharply.

He looked up, expecting to see one of the guests or one of the servants. It was Moody who entered the room. Hardyman laid down his pen, and fixed his eyes sternly on the man who had dared to interrupt him.

"What the devil do you want?" he asked.

"I have seen Miss Isabel, and spoken with her," Moody replied. "Mr. Hardyman, I believe it is in your power to set this matter right. For the young lady's sake, sir, you must not leave England without doing it."

Hardyman turned to his foreman. "Is this fellow mad or drunk?" he asked.

Moody proceeded as calmly and as resolutely as if those words had not been spoken. "I apologize for my intrusion, sir. I will trouble you with no explanations. I will only ask one question. Have you a memorandum of the number of that five-hundred pound note you paid away in France?"

Hardyman lost all control over himself.

"You scoundrel!" he cried, "have you been prying into my private affairs? Is it your business to know what I did in France?"

"Is it your vengeance on a woman to refuse to tell her the number of a bank-note?" Moody rejoined, firmly.

That answer forced its way, through Hardyman's anger, to Hardyman's sense of honor. He rose and advanced to Moody. For a moment the two men faced each other in silence. "You're a bold fellow," said Hardyman, with a sudden change from anger to irony. "I'll do the lady justice. I'll look at my pocketbook."

He put his hand into the breast-pocket of his coat; he searched his other pockets; he turned over the objects on his writing-table. The book was gone.

Moody watched him with a feeling of despair. "Oh! Mr. Hardyman, don't say you have lost your pocketbook!"

He sat down again at his desk, with sullen submission to the new disaster. "All I can say is you're at liberty to look for it," he replied. "I must have dropped it somewhere." He turned impatiently to the foreman, "Now then! What is the next check wanted? I shall go mad if I wait in this damned place much longer!"

Moody left him, and found his way to the servants' offices. "Mr. Hardyman has lost his pocketbook," he said. "Look for it, indoors and out—on the lawn, and in the tent. Ten pounds reward for the man who finds it!"

Servants and waiters instantly dispersed, eager for the promised reward. The men who pursued the search outside the cottage divided their forces. Some of them examined the lawn and the flower-beds. Others went straight to the empty tent. These last were too completely absorbed in pursuing the object in view to notice that they disturbed a dog, eating a stolen lunch of his own from the morsels left on the plates. The dog slunk away under the canvas when the men came in, waited in hiding until they had gone, then returned to the tent, and went on with his luncheon.

Moody hastened back to the part of the grounds (close to the shrubbery) in which Isabel was waiting his return.

She looked at him, while he was telling her of his interview with Hardyman, with an expression in her eyes which he had never seen in them before—an expression which set his heart beating wildly, and made him break off in his narrative before he had reached the end.

"I understand," she said quietly, as he stopped in confusion. "You have made one more sacrifice to my welfare. Robert! I believe you are the noblest man that ever breathed the breath of life!"

His eyes sank before hers; he blushed like a boy. "I have done nothing for you yet," he said. "Don't despair of the future, if the pocketbook should not be found. I know who the man is who received the bank note; and I have only to find him to decide the question whether it is the stolen note or not."

She smiled sadly as his enthusiasm. "Are you going back to Mr. Sharon to help you?" she asked. "That trick he played me has destroyed my belief in him. He no more knows than I do who the thief really is."

"You are mistaken, Isabel. He knows—and I know." He stopped there, and made a sign to her to be silent. One of the servants was approaching them.

"Is the pocketbook found?" Moody asked.

"No, sir."

"Has Mr. Hardyman left the cottage?"

"He has just gone, sir. Have you any further instructions to give us?"