“That’s plain to be seen.  Well, if you can’t, you can’t, of course.  And now, as it’s past nine, the best thing you can do is to go to bed at once.”

With the same humility she had evinced throughout, the woman obeyed at once.  Mr. Parmalee, left alone, sat over his oysters and his port, luxuriating in the thirty sovereigns in the present and the three hundred pounds in the prospective.

“It’s been an uncommon good investment,” he reflected, “and knocks the photograph business into a cocked hat.  Then there’s Sybilla—­she goes with the bargain, too.  Three hundred pounds and a handsome, black-eyed wife.  I wish she hadn’t such a devil of a temper.  I’ll take her home to the farm, and if mother doesn’t break her in she’ll be the first she ever failed with.”

Mr. Parmalee retired betimes, slept soundly, and was up in the gray day-dawn.  Breakfast, piping hot, smoked on the table when Mrs. Denover appeared.

“Eat, drink and be merry,” said Mr. Parmalee.  “Go in and win.  Try that under-done steak, and don’t took quite so much like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, if you can help it.”

The woman tried with touching humility to please him, and did her best, but that best was a miserable failure.

A cab came for them in half an hour, and whirled them off on the first stage of their journey.

In the golden light of the spring afternoon Mr. Parmalee made his appearance again at the Blue Bell Inn, with a veiled lady, all in black, hanging on his arm.

“This here lady is my maiden aunt, come over from the State of Maine to see your British institutions,” Mr. Parmalee said, in fluent fiction, to the obsequious landlady.  “She’s writing a book, and she’ll mention the Blue Bell favorably in it.  Her name is Miss Hepzekiah Parmalee.  Let her have your best bedroom and all the luxuries this hotel affords, and I will foot the bill.”

He lighted a cigar and sallied forth.

“Miss Hepzekiah Parmalee” dined alone in her own room; then sat by the window, with white face and strained eyes, waiting for Mr. Parmalee’s return.

It was almost dark when he came.  He entered hurriedly, flushed and excited.

“Fortune favors us this bout, Mrs. Denover,” he said, “I’ve met an old chum down on the wharf yonder—­a countryman—­and I’d as soon have expected to find the President of the United States in this little one-horse town.  His name’s Davis—­Captain Davis, of the schooner ’Angelina Dobbs’—­and he’s going to sail for Southampton this very night.  There’s a streak of luck.  A free passage for you and for me up to Southampton to-night.”

“But my—­Lady Kingsland?” she faltered.

“I’ve made that all right, too.  I met one of the flunkies and sent word to Sybilla that we were here, and that she’d better see us at once.  I expect an answer every——­ Ah, by George! speak of the—­here she is!”

It was Miss Sybilla Silver, sailing gracefully down the street.  Mr. Parmalee darted out and met her—­superbly handsome, her dark cheeks flushed with some inward excitement, her black eyes gleaming with strange fire.