Miss Million's Maid Part 36

My heart meanwhile was bursting with the wild longing to find out if Mr.

Burke knew anything at all of the whereabouts of my mistress.

I decided that he did not, for if he had wouldn't he have mentioned something to do with her?

As it was, which I am sure was buzzing in all of our brains, the name Million did not pa.s.s any of our lips!

The men went out together, apparently on the most friendly terms, to pay the landlady and exchange inspection of the "automobiles." By some manoeuvring or other Mr. Burke contrived to come back first into the coffee-room where I stood alone before the mirror readjusting the black gauze scarf.

He came behind and spoke to my reflection in the mirror, smiling into the eyes that met his own blue and unabashed ones in the gla.s.s.

"Child, a word with you," murmured the Honourable Jim in his flattering and confidential tones. "Will you tell me something? Does all this mean, now, that my good services are no longer required in the way of introducing to you with a view to matrimony the wealthy alien that I mentioned at that charming tea the day before yesterday, was it?"

"What do you mean, Mr. Burke?" I said. "What do you mean by all this?"

The Honourable Jim jerked his smooth black head towards the window, whence he could get a glimpse of the waiting cars.

"I mean our friend, the American Eaglet, who is so highly favoured that he doesn't even have to wait until Friday afternoon off," said the Honourable Jim softly, watching my face, "for his flights with the little black-plumaged pigeon."

Naturally when one is watched one colours up. Who could help it? The Honourable Jim said rather more loudly: "I'll tell you something. You have every symptom about you of a girl who has had a proposal of marriage in the last couple of days. Didn't I see it at lunch? The way you held your head! The new pride in your voice! Something in the very movement of the hand----"

He caught me very gently by the wrist of my left hand as he spoke. I hadn't yet put on my gloves.

"No ring there," said the Honourable Jim, dropping the hand again.

"But--Miss Lovelace, child! Will you deny to me that some one has not proposed to you since you and I had tea together?"

At that I could not help thinking of poor Mr. Brace in Paris. He would be coming over at the end of the week to receive the answer which I had not yet had time to think about. I was so amazed at Mr. Burke's perspicacity that I could not help reddening even deeper with pure surprise. The Irishman said softly: "I am answered! Tell me, when are you going over to the Stars and Stripes?"

Good heavens! what an idiotic mistake. He really imagined that the man who had proposed to me was not Mr. Brace, but Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, of Chicago! I protested incoherently: "Why! I only met him last night."

"What is time to love?" laughed Mr. Burke.

"But don't be so ridiculous," I besought him. "This Mr. Jessop has nothing to do with me! He is----" Here the conversation was stopped by the entrance of Mr. Jessop himself.

I think Mr. Hiram P. Jessop soon discovered that Mr. Burke had made up his mind about one thing.

Namely, that he meant to start first from the inn where we'd lunched!

He rose to say good-bye, and to add that he must be "off" so very firmly, and just after he had helped me to another plateful of raspberries drowned in cream.

We shook hands, and in a few seconds we heard him starting his motor--or rather, the Super-car that I conclude he had borrowed, or "w.a.n.gled," or whatever he calls it, from one of his many wealthy friends. Through the window I caught a flashing glimpse of this hedge-sparrow-blue car with her silver mascot whizzing past--on the road to Lewes.

This was odd, I thought.

For there was no doubt that when we pulled up at the inn, that car's nose had been towards home, and London.

Then we, too, started off for Lewes, and the inquiries we had to make there.

This was when I discovered that Mr. Jessop and I were, as I've said, "shadowed."

Mr. Burke, in that gorgeous car of his, had evidently determined, for some obscure reason, not to lose sight of us.

We overtook him, tooling leisurely along, a mile this side of Uckfield.

We waved; we caught a cheery gleam of his white teeth and black-lashed blue eyes. I thought that would be the last of him. Oh, dear, no. A quarter of a mile further on he appeared to the right by some cross-road. And from then on he and the light-blue car kept appearing and disappearing in our field of vision.

At one moment the light-blue and silver gleam of his motor would flash through the midsummer green of trees overshadowing some lane ahead of us. Again he would appear a little behind and to the left. Presently, again, to the right....

"That friend of yours seems to know the country considerable well,"

remarked the American to me. "Looks like as if he was chasing b.u.t.terflies all over it. Is he a great Nature-lover, Miss Smith?"

"I couldn't tell you," I said vaguely, and feeling rather annoyed. "I don't know this Mr. Burke at all well."

"Is that so?" said the young American gravely.

Near Lewes we lost sight of that glittering car; it seemed finally.

I felt thoroughly relieved at that. He was a most embarra.s.sing sort of travelling companion, the Honourable Jim!

CHAPTER XXIV

WE SEEK "THE REFUGE"

WE (Mr. Jessop and I) drove slowly to the first post-office.

There we both alighted. And I in my impatience fairly flung myself against the long counter with its wirework screen that fenced off the post-office girls.

They stared curiously at the anxious-looking young woman in black and the grey-clad, unmistakably American young man, who both at once began to make inquiries about a certain telegram which had been handed in there at half-past seven o'clock the evening before.

"Are you the person to whom the telegram was addressed?" one of the girls asked almost suspiciously.

"Yes. I am Miss Smith. You see! Here is an envelope addressed to me at the Hotel Cecil," I said, feverishly producing that envelope (it belonged to Mr. Brace's last note to me). "Can you tell me who handed in this message?"

"I couldn't, I'm sure," said the girl who had spoken suspiciously. "I was off last evening before six."

"Can you tell me who was here?" I demanded, fuming at the delay.

The girls seemed blissfully unaware that this was a matter of life and death to me.

"Miss Carfax was here, I believe," volunteered one of the other girls, in the "parcels" division of the long counter.

I asked eagerly: "Which is Miss Carfax, please?"

"Just gone to her lunch," the two girls replied at once. "Won't be back until two o'clock."

"Oh, dear!" I fretted. Then a third girl spoke up.