“You met him, did you?  When?”

“Oh—­I’ll tell you all about that afterwards.  It’s getting late.  We shall have lots of talk.  You’ll let me take you home?  We’ll have a cab, shall we?  Lady Pollys don’t walk about the streets on a wet night.”

She stood in thought.

“I want you to do something for me.”

“Right you are!  Tell me and I’ll do it like a shot, see if I don’t.”

His arm again encircled her, and this time Polly did not talk of her ’at or her ’air.  Indeed, she bent her head, half hiding her face against him.

“You know that letter I sent you?”

“What’s in it?  Something nicey-picey?”

“I want you to let me go to the ’ouse with you—­just to the door—­and I want you to give me that letter back—­just as it is—­without opening it.  You will, won’t you, deary?”

“Of course I will, if you really mean it.”

“I do, it was a narsty letter.  I couldn’t bear to have you read it now.”

Gammon had no difficulty in imagining the kind of epistle which Polly would desire suppressed; yet, for some obscure reason, he would rather have read it.  But his promise was given.  Polly, in turn, promised to write another letter for him as soon as possible.

So they drove in a hansom, through a night which washed the fog away, to Kennington Road, and whilst Polly kept her place in the vehicle Gammon ran upstairs.  There lay the letter on his dressing-table.  He hastened down with it, and before handing it to its writer kissed the envelope.

“Go along!” exclaimed Polly, in high good humour, as she reached out with eager fingers.

Late as it was he accompanied her to Shaftesbury Avenue, and they parted tenderly after having come to an agreement about the next evening.

CHAPTER XVIII

LORD POLPERRO’S REPRESENTATIVE

By discreet inquiry Mr. Gammon procured an introduction to “Debrett,” who supplied him with a great deal of information.  In the first place he learned that the present Lord Polperro, fourth of that title, was not the son, but the brother of the Lord Polperro preceding him, both being offspring, it was plain, of the peer whose will occasioned a lawsuit some forty years ago.  Granted the truth of scandalous rumour, which had such remarkable supports in facial characteristics, the present bearer of the title would be, in fact, half-brother to Francis Quodling.  Again, it was discoverable that the Lord Polperro of to-day succeeded to the barony in the very year of Mrs. Clover’s husband’s second disappearance.

“Just what I said,” was Gammon’s mental comment as he thumped the aristocratic pages.

Now for the women.  To begin with, Lord Polperro was set down a bachelor—­ha! ha!  Then he had one sister, Miss Adela Trefoyle, older than himself, and that might very well be the lady who was seen beside him at the theatre.  Then again, though his elder brother’s male children had died, there was living a daughter, by name Adeline, recently wedded to—­by jorrocks!—­Lucian Gildersleeve, Esquire.  Why, here was “the whole boiling of ’em!”