“Where’s Cradell?” said Eames, repeating the question.  “Upon my word, I don’t know.  I walked to the office with him, but I haven’t seen him since.  We don’t sit in the same room, you know.”

“John!” and then she stopped.

“What’s up now?” said John.

“John!  That woman’s off and left her husband.  As sure as your name’s John Eames, that foolish fellow has gone off with her.”

“What, Cradell?  I don’t believe it.”

“She went out of this house at two o’clock in the afternoon, and has never been back since.”  That, certainly, was only four hours from the present time, and such an absence from home in the middle of the day was but weak evidence on which to charge a married woman with the great sin of running off with a lover.  This Amelia felt, and therefore she went on to explain.  “He’s there upstairs in the drawing-room, the very picture of disconsolateness.”

“Who,—­Cradell?”

“Lupex is.  He’s been drinking a little, I’m afraid; but he’s very unhappy, indeed.  He had an appointment to meet his wife here at four o’clock, and when he came he found her gone.  He rushed up into their room, and now he says she has broken open a box he had and taken off all his money.”

“But he never had any money.”

“He paid mother some the day before yesterday.”

“That’s just the reason he shouldn’t have any to-day.”

“She certainly has taken things she wouldn’t have taken if she’d merely gone out shopping or anything like that, for I’ve been up in the room and looked about.  She’d three necklaces.  They weren’t much account; but she must have them all on, or else have got them in her pocket.”

“Cradell has never gone off with her in that way.  He may be a fool—­”

“Oh, he is, you know.  I’ve never seen such a fool about a woman as he has been.”

“But he wouldn’t be a party to stealing a lot of trumpery trinkets, or taking her husband’s money.  Indeed, I don’t think he has anything to do with it.”  Then Eames thought ever the circumstances of the day, and remembered that he had certainly not seen Cradell since the morning.  It was that public servant’s practice to saunter into Eames’s room in the middle of the day, and there consume bread and cheese and beer,—­in spite of an assertion which Johnny had once made as to crumbs of biscuit bathed in ink.  But on this special day he had not done so.  “I can’t think he has been such a fool as that,” said Johnny.

“But he has,” said Amelia.  “It’s dinner-time now, and where is he?  Had he any money left, Johnny?”

So interrogated, Eames disclosed a secret confided to him by his friend which no other circumstances would have succeeded in dragging from his breast.

“She borrowed twelve pounds from him about a fortnight since, immediately after quarter-day.  And she owed him money, too, before that.”

“Oh, what a soft!” exclaimed Amelia; “and he hasn’t paid mother a shilling for the last two months!”