“Jimmy,” said the colonel, with a chastened and rather pathetic air, “I tell you what it is.  I’ve been infernally badly treated.  No use to mince matters.  I’ve been jilted, sir.  Jilted!”

“I suppose I may gather from that,” suggested Jimmy, striving to keep anything resembling elation from his voice, “that, as far as you’re concerned, Bridget is free——­”

“Free!” cried Colonel Faversham.  “Any woman can easily be free who attaches no value to her most solemn vows.  Free!  Good gracious!  How can a man bind such a wench?”

“Thank you,” said Jimmy, turning towards the door, “that’s all I wanted to hear!”

His position did not appear very enviable, because while he could not tolerate any abuse of Bridget, to tell the truth it was impossible to say a word in her defence.

“One minute—­one minute, Jimmy!” cried Colonel Faversham.  “The more I think of it, the more extraordinary this visit of yours seems!  As a boy you always had plenty of cheek!  Between ourselves!  You seem to know a good deal.  I hope to goodness you haven’t blabbed to Carrissima!”

“About your engagement, do you mean?”

“Yes, yes,” said the colonel impatiently.

“I haven’t said a word.  In fact, she has not the remotest idea of anything of the kind.”

“Well, that’s a blessing,” was the answer, and Jimmy went away, getting out of the house without seeing Carrissima again.  The moment he reached Upper Grosvenor Street he inquired for Sybil, and being told she was in her own room, mounted the stairs several treads at a time.

“May I come in?” he asked, tapping at her door.

“Whatever is the matter now, Jimmy?” exclaimed Sybil, throwing it open.

“Well, it has been a wonderful morning,” he explained.  “I have got a free hand.  Bridget has thrown old Faversham over.”

“My dear,” said Sybil, “how extremely barefaced!”

“I have seen him,” Jimmy continued.  “There is nothing on earth in my way.  All I have to do is to find her, and that won’t take many days.”

While he stood outside Sybil’s bedroom door, explaining how he had heard the news of Bridget’s departure from Golfney Place, his sister underwent the sorest temptation of her life.  Surely no situation could be more tantalizing.  If it were not for the solemn promise she had made to Carrissima, how easy it would prove to keep Jimmy from the pursuit which might end in his ruin!

Although he remained so strangely uninfluenced by the knowledge of Bridget’s engagement to Colonel Faversham, her simultaneous intrigue with Mark Driver could scarcely fail to bring Jimmy to his senses.  For the present, however, Sybil tried to hope that there might be more difficulty in running his quarry to earth than he anticipated.  She might indeed be hiding somewhere perplexingly close at hand; and most likely Mark held the clue!

Jimmy lost no time in setting to work in earnest.  In the first place, he inserted advertisements in the halfpenny evening papers and such of their morning contemporaries as made a special feature of betting news.  These he thought would be most in favour amongst taxi-cab drivers, and, of course, the important thing was to discover the man who had driven “a lady and her luggage from No. 5, Golfney Place” that fateful afternoon.