“Oh, I wasn’t to go?” asked Cecilia, looking up with more enthusiasm.

“My dear,” replied McVay, “I must own that I was base enough to consider a plan that would separate us.  The mine, it seems, is no place for ladies.  But we will think no more about it.  I see by your manner that your feelings...”

“Dear Billy,” said the girl gently, “you must not give it up.  You know that I can always go to the Lees, until—­until I get a position.  And nothing is so important as that you should have work that is satisfactory to you.  Of course you must accept.”

“Did you ever hear anything so noble?” asked McVay.  “Yes, I suppose I ought to accept.  So they both tell me.  I must go, mustn’t I, Hen?”

“Well, it looks like it would be better for you if you did,” replied the detective, who had fortunately his legitimate share of American humour.

“There is another point, Cecilia,” McVay went on, “if I do accept, I shall have to leave at once.  When did you say, Hen?”

“Train to New York this afternoon,—­steamer sails to-morrow.”

“Oh, dear.  That’s very sudden,” said Cecilia.

“At a word from you, dear, I’ll give it up,” remarked McVay.

“No, no, of course not.  I should never forgive myself.  You must go.  Perhaps it is all the better that I did not know beforehand.  It saves me just that amount.”

“We’ve no time to lose,” remarked McVay briskly, “if we are going to try for that afternoon train.  I suppose we can get a sleigh at the gardener’s, Holland, if we can struggle as far as that.  Well, well, we must hurry off.”

It was McVay who urged on the preparations for departure, hurrying his sister, flitting about the house at such a rate that the detective, who was of a solider build, found it hard to keep up with.

Nor was it only physical agility that McVay required of the unfortunate man.  Having overheard Geoffrey telling him that he was not to betray the real state of things before Miss McVay, under penalty of losing his money, McVay took special delight in making him look like a fool, calling upon him to remember happenings which existed only in McVay’s own fertile brain.

“What, Hen,” he would cry suddenly, “was the name of that pretty black haired girl you were so sweet on,—­you know, the daughter of the canal-boat man.”

The detective, looking very much alarmed, would of course reply that he did not know what McVay was talking about.

“There, there,” McVay would reply soothingly patting him on the shoulder, “I’m not going into the story of the pink blanket.  You can always trust to my discretion.  But I would like just to remember her name.  It was so peculiar,—­a name I never heard before.”

The detective, who had been respectably married since he was twenty, found himself unable to remember any female names and finally in agony suggested “Mary.”

“Mary, my dear fellow, no; that was your friend the paper-girl.  There is nothing very unusual about Mary, is there, Holland?  No, the name I was trying to think of was Ethelberta.  Now you remember, don’t you?”