"But you will have your father's estate in due course, won't you?" she asked quite innocently. "You always plead poverty. You are so like a man."
"Ah! Dorise, I am really poor. You don't understand--you can't!"
"But I do," she said. "You may have debts. Every man has them--tailor's bills, restaurant bills, betting debts, jewellery debts. Oh! I know. I've heard all about these things from another. Well, if you have them, you'll be able to settle them out of your father's estate all in due course."
"And if he has left me nothing?"
"Nothing!" exclaimed the handsome girl at his side. "What do you mean?"
"Well----" he said very slowly. "At present I have nothing--that's all. That is why at Monte Carlo I suggested that--that----"
He did not conclude the sentence.
"I remember. You said that I had better marry George Sherrard--that thick-lipped ass. You said that because you are hard-up?"
"Yes. I am hard-up. Very hard-up. At present I am existing in an obscure lodging practically upon the charity of a man upon whom, so far as I can ascertain, I have no claim whatsoever."
"The notorious thief?"
Hugh nodded, and said: "That fact in itself mystifies me. I can see no motive. I am entirely innocent of the crime attributed to me, and if Mademoiselle were in her right mind she would instantly clear me of this terrible charge."
"But why did you go to her home that night, Hugh?"
"As I have already told you, I went to demand a reply to a single question I put to her," he said. "But please do no let us discuss the affair further. The whole circumstances are painful to me--more painful than you can possibly imagine. One day--and I hope it will be soon--you will fully realize what all this has cost me."
The girl drew a long breath.
"I know, Hugh," she said. "I know, dear--and I do trust you."
They halted, and he bent and impressed upon her lips a fierce caress.
So entirely absorbed in each other were the pair that they failed to notice the slim figure of a man who had followed the girl at some distance. Indeed, the individual in question had been lurking outside the house in Grosvenor Gardens, and had watched Dorise leave. At the end of the street a taxi was drawn up at the kerb awaiting him. Dorise had hailed the man, but his reply was a surly "Engaged."
Then, walking about a couple of hundred yards, she had found another, and entering it, had driven to the Marble Arch. But the first taxi had followed the second one, and in it was the well-set-up man who was silently watching her in the park as she walked with her lover towards the Victoria Gate.