Rawson-Clew, remembering the winter day at Marbridge, answered, “I am acquainted with him.”

Mijnheer nodded.  “Yes, yes,” he said; then, “it is very sad, and much to be regretted.  I cannot but give to you, and through you to her father, very bad news of Miss Polkington.  She is not what we thought her; she has disgraced—­”

But here Rawson-Clew interrupted, but in the quiet, leisurely way which was so incomprehensible to the Hollanders.  “My dear sir,” he said, “please spare yourself the trouble of these details; I am the man with whom Miss Polkington had the misfortune to be lost on the Dunes.”

Vrouw Van Heigen gasped; the gentle, drawling voice, the manner, the whole air of the speaker overwhelmed her, and shattered all her previous thoughts of the affair.  With Mijnheer it was different; right was right, and wrong wrong to him, no matter who the persons concerned might be.

“Then, sir,” he said, growing somewhat red, “I am glad indeed that I cannot tell you where she is.”

Rawson-Clew looked up with faint admiration, righteous indignation, or at all events the open expression of it, was a discourtesy practically extinct with the people among whom he usually lived.  He felt respect for the old bulb grower who would be guilty of it.

“I am sorry you should think so badly of me,” he said; “I can only assure you that it is without reason.  You do not believe me?  I suppose it is quite useless for me to say that my sole motive in seeking Miss Polkington is a desire to prevent her from coming to any harm?”

“She will, I should think, come to less harm without you than with you,” Mijnheer retorted; and Rawson-Clew, seeing as plainly as Julia had yesterday, the impossibility of making the position clear, did not attempt it.

“I hope you may be right,” he said, “but I am afraid she will be in difficulties.  She had little money, and no friends in Holland, and was, I have reason to believe, on such terms with her family that it would not suit her to return to England.”

“Ah, but she must have gone to England!” Vrouw Van Heigen cried.  “She went away in a carriage as one does when one goes to the station to start on a journey.”

“She received letters from her family,” Mijnheer said sturdily, “not frequently, but occasionally; there was not, I think, any quarrel or disagreement.  She must certainly have set out to return home last night.  If not, and if she had nowhere to go, why should she leave as she did yesterday?  We did not say ‘go!’ we were content that she should remain several days, until her arrangements could be made.”

“She might not have cared for that,” Rawson-Clew suggested; “if you insinuated to her the sort of things you did to me; women do not like that, as a rule, you know.”

All the same, as he said this, he could not help thinking Mijnheer right; Julia must have had somewhere to go.  Her dignity and feelings were not of the order to lose sight of essentials in details, or to demand unreasonable sacrifice of common sense.  She must have had some destination in view when she left the Van Heigens yesterday, and, as far as he could see, there was no destination open to her but home.