The Major expressed his gratification. For once at least he was sincere. It was most unfortunate, he said, that he should be in temporary need of cash. He laid strict injunctions upon Alice to spend what she had freely and not for one moment to forget that she was a Carden; if she wanted more money she was to write to him without hesitation. He saw her off at Waterloo presently. He paid for the cab in the most lordly fashion, and insisted on his daughter travelling first class, though he had not the money to pay for the ticket. But Alice was looking forward too eagerly to her holiday to notice these things. "Good-bye," she cried. "You will have left for the Continent before I come back. But don't let the thought of my being alone in London interfere with your pleasure. I should like to feel you were not troubling about me." "I'll try, my dear," the Major said. "Good-bye." CHAPTER XXIII A CHANGE OF AIR About the same time that Major Carden was sitting over his breakfast, Sir George Haredale was gloomily contemplating his own. He had read most of his letters, and had impatiently pushed aside the sheaf of bills and applications for money which poured like a flood upon him at every post. Some of them were peremptory and some imploring. But they had been coming in for so long that the master of Haredale Park was more or less hardened to them. But one communication was distinctly out of the common and worried him excessively. "What the deuce does it mean?" he soliloquized irritably. "And who are these people, Absalom & Co.? I never had any dealings with them. According to their note-paper they call themselves financial agents, but the whole thing looks more like a communication from money-lenders. Yet I don't see how I owe them anything. They write to remind me that in virtue of an assignment made by Mr. Raymond Copley of a certain date I am in their debt to the extent of more than forty thousand pounds. What the dickens is an assignment? And what does Copley mean by doing a thing of this sort without consulting me? These people hope I shall make arrangements to liquidate the debt in the course of the next fourteen days. Why, they might just as well ask me to find as many millions. But I daresay there is nothing really alarming about the thing if I only understood it. I wish I had a head for figures. I wish my father had given me a business training. Still, Copley will put it right. Perhaps he is annoyed at the way that May has been behaving. But I hardly think he will visit her folly upon me. However, I must say the thing is alarming." Sir George shuffled the letter into his pocket as the door opened and May entered. She was dressed for going out and was buttoning her driving gloves round her wrists. Outside on the gravel stood a smart cob in a Whitechapel cart. "Where are you going?" Sir George asked. "To the station to meet Alice Carden. She will be here for lunch."