‘I don’t see what Lazarus has to do with the matter. The girl came to me from Mrs. Delany. I suppose that after leaving me, and having no character, she was forced to take what situation she could.’
‘Charles can tell us. I hear his voice in the hall. He must have known her before she went to you if she had the silk dress and beads in your house.—Charles,’ he said as his son entered, ‘catechising continued.’
The young man had recovered his buoyancy.
‘By all means, father, but not in public.’
‘Want to know whether that person you were talking of with me yesterday has been long in present situation.’
‘All her life,’ answered Charles, promptly. ‘That is, since she was twelve years old.’
‘Was she ever in service with a Mrs. Delany?’
‘Wife of Colonel Delany,’ explained Mr. Worthivale.
‘Not to my knowledge; certainly not recently.’
‘Where was she before Christmas?’ asked the steward.
‘That I cannot say. Possibly then she may have been at the Colonel’s, but I do not know.’
‘Where was she before that?’ asked his father.
‘On November the fifth she was at the Barbican, where she had been since childhood. She was away till Christmas, and then returned, and has been there ever since.’
Cheek looked at Worthivale and shook his head.
‘Sent,’ he said.
CHAPTER XLIII.
‘SHARES?’
Time was money to Mr. Check. He did not allow the grass to grow under his feet. Consequently, on reaching Plymouth he went at once to the Golden Balls. Mr. Cheek was a clear as well as a hard-headed man; he was a rapid thinker, and prompt in forming and acting on his decisions. He was one of those conquering men who conquer because dominated by self-assurance. He was headstrong and intolerant, because he was incapable of seeing from any other standpoint than his own, and of allowing that any other view was admissible. These are the heroes who have the world at their feet. What
