Chapter 10 - Page 2

engrossed with Guy Walsingham."

Later in the day I informed my correspondent, for whom indeed I
kept a loose diary of the situation, that I had made the
acquaintance of this celebrity and that she was a pretty little
girl who wore her hair in what used to be called a crop. She
looked so juvenile and so innocent that if, as Mr. Morrow had
announced, she was resigned to the larger latitude, her superiority
to prejudice must have come to her early. I spent most of the day
hovering about Neil Paraday's room, but it was communicated to me
from below that Guy Walsingham, at Prestidge, was a success.
Toward evening I became conscious somehow that her superiority was
contagious, and by the time the company separated for the night I
was sure the larger latitude had been generally accepted. I
thought of Dora Forbes and felt that he had no time to lose.
Before dinner I received a telegram from Lady Augusta Minch. "Lord
Dorimont thinks he must have left bundle in train - enquire." How
could I enquire - if I was to take the word as a command? I was
too worried and now too alarmed about Neil Paraday. The Doctor
came back, and it was an immense satisfaction to me to be sure he
was wise and interested. He was proud of being called to so
distinguished a patient, but he admitted to me that night that my
friend was gravely ill. It was really a relapse, a recrudescence
of his old malady. There could be no question of moving him: we
must at any rate see first, on the spot, what turn his condition
would take. Meanwhile, on the morrow, he was to have a nurse. On
the morrow the dear man was easier, and my spirits rose to such
cheerfulness that I could almost laugh over Lady Augusta's second
telegram: "Lord Dorimont's servant been to station - nothing
found. Push enquiries." I did laugh, I'm sure, as I remembered
this to be the mystic scroll I had scarcely allowed poor Mr. Morrow
to point his umbrella at. Fool that I had been: the thirty-seven
influential journals wouldn't have destroyed it, they'd only have
printed it. Of course I said nothing to Paraday.

When the nurse arrived she turned me out of the room, on which I
went downstairs. I should premise that at breakfast the news that
our brilliant friend was doing well excited universal complacency,
and the Princess graciously remarked that he was only to be
commiserated for missing the society of Miss Collop. Mrs. Wimbush,
whose social gift never shone brighter than in the dry decorum with
which she accepted this fizzle in her fireworks, mentioned to me
that Guy Walsingham had made a very favourable impression on her
Imperial Highness. Indeed I think every one did so, and that, like
the money-market or the national honour, her Imperial Highness was