"I did have another look after Sarah again, though I didn't tell you;

I'd a tender conscience about that pretty young woman. I didn't find

her, but I found out her husband's name, and I made a note of it. But

hang it, I lost my pocketbook. However, if I heard it, I should know

it again. I've got my faculties as if I was in my prime, but names

wear out, by Jove! Sometimes I'm no better than a confounded tax-paper

before the names are filled in. However, if I hear of her and her

family, you shall know, Nick. You'd like to do something for her, now

she's your step-daughter."

"Doubtless," said Mr. Bulstrode, with the usual steady look of his

light-gray eyes; "though that might reduce my power of assisting you."

As he walked out of the room, Raffles winked slowly at his back, and

then turned towards the window to watch the banker riding away--virtually

at his command. His lips first curled with a smile and then opened

with a short triumphant laugh.

"But what the deuce was the name?" he presently said, half aloud,

scratching his head, and wrinkling his brows horizontally. He had not

really cared or thought about this point of forgetfulness until it

occurred to him in his invention of annoyances for Bulstrode.

"It began with L; it was almost all l's I fancy," he went on, with a

sense that he was getting hold of the slippery name. But the hold was

too slight, and he soon got tired of this mental chase; for few men

were more impatient of private occupation or more in need of making

themselves continually heard than Mr. Raffles. He preferred using his

time in pleasant conversation with the bailiff and the housekeeper,

from whom he gathered as much as he wanted to know about Mr.

Bulstrode's position in Middlemarch.

After all, however, there was a dull space of time which needed

relieving with bread and cheese and ale, and when he was seated alone

with these resources in the wainscoted parlor, he suddenly slapped his

knee, and exclaimed, "Ladislaw!" That action of memory which he had

tried to set going, and had abandoned in despair, had suddenly

completed itself without conscious effort--a common experience,

agreeable as a completed sneeze, even if the name remembered is of no

value. Raffles immediately took out his pocket-book, and wrote down

the name, not because he expected to use it, but merely for the sake of

not being at a loss if he ever did happen to want it. He was not going

to tell Bulstrode: there was no actual good in telling, and to a mind

like that of Mr. Raffles there is always probable good in a secret.




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