“I would now, if there was an opening at Whitbury, and low as life would be, I’d face it for my father’s sake.  But here I cannot stay.”

Both Claude and Headley saw that Tom had reasons which he did not choose to reveal.  However, Claude was taken into his confidence that very afternoon.

“I shall make a fool of myself with that schoolmistress.  I have been near enough to it a dozen times already; and this magnificent conduct of hers about the cholera has given the finishing stroke to my brains.  If I stay on here, I shall marry her:  I know I shall! and I won’t—­I’d go to-morrow, if it were not that I’m bound, for my own credit, to see the cholera safe into the town, and out again.”

Tom did not hint a word of the lost money, or of the month’s delay which Grace had asked of him.  The month was drawing fast to a close now, however:  but no sign of the belt.  Still, Tom had honour enough in him to be silent on the point, even to Claude.

“By the by, have you heard from the wanderers this week?”

“I heard from Sabina this morning.  Marie is very poorly, I fear.  They have been at Kissingen, bathing; and are going to Bertrich:  somebody has recommended the baths there.”

“Bertrich!  Where’s Bertrich?”

“The most delicious little nest of a place, half way up the Moselle, among the volcano craters.”

“Don’t know it.  Have they found that Yankee?”

“No.”

“Why, I thought Sabina had a whole detective force of pets and proteges, from Boulogne to Rome.”

“Well, she has at least heard of him at Baden; and then again at Stuttgard:  but he has escaped them as yet.”

“And poor Marie is breaking her heart all the while?  I’ll tell you what, Claude, it will be well for him if he escapes me as well as them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I certainly shan’t go to the East without shaking hands once more with Marie and Sabina; and if in so doing I pass that fellow, it’s a pity if I don’t have a snap shot at him.”

“Tom!  Tom!  I had hoped your duelling days were over.”

“They will be, over, when one can get the law to punish such puppies; but not till then.  Hang the fellow!  What business had he with her at all, if he didn’t intend to marry her?”

“I tell you, as I told you before, it is she who will not marry him.”

“And yet she’s breaking her heart for him.  I can see it all plain enough, Claude.  She has found him out only too late.  I know him—­ luxurious, selfish, blaze; would give a thousand dollars to-morrow, I believe, like the old Roman, for a new pleasure:  and then amuses himself with her till he breaks her heart!  Of course she won’t many him:  because she knows that if he found out her Quadroon blood—­ah, that’s it!  I’ll lay my life he has found it out already, and that is why he has bolted!”

Claude had no answer to give.  That talk at the Exhibition made it only too probable.