'Before this week is out, my lord. There is one acceptance there for £300 on which the three days of grace are yet to run, and then I shall act upon the whole. Your lordship gave me _carte blanche_ to acquire all these documents, and, having done so, your money must be repaid to you through me.' 'Precisely so.' The two shook hands, and again Cadbury dived into the choking fog, to make his way westward to his club as best he might, feeling assured that an unexpected pressure would now be put upon the luckless Alison, by means of her father's mental misery and inordinate pride. He knew how intense was the girl's devotion to the old man; he knew also that the latter, with all his love for his daughter, was not without a considerable spice of gross selfishness in his nature; that he loved the good things of this life very much, all the more that many were gone, and more might go, utterly beyond his reach, unless some one interposed to save him; and so Cadbury chuckled as he thought of the fatal ball he had set in motion with the aid of Mr. Solomon Slagg. And that evening, when in the brilliantly lighted dining-room of his magnificent and luxurious club in Pall Mall, after a sybarite repast, with many curious and elaborate _entrées_, he drank his Clicquot Veuve and Schloss Johannisberg, not an atom of compunction occurred to him for the misery he was working the poor but proud old baronet, and the sweet girl, whom, _bon gré mal gré_, he had resolved to make his wife. CHAPTER XIII. AN ENIGMA. Despite the silent vow he had made, Captain Dalton could not keep away from Laura Trelawney, the only woman the world seemed to hold for him, and yet whom he had no hope of winning. His was no lovesick boy's fancy, yet it made him sallow, pale, and worn-looking, restless in solitude, and taciturn in society, always seeking for action, not for any tangible result that action gave, but as a means of present distraction. The baffled Jerry Wilmot was not slow, at mess and elsewhere, to note the change in the generally quiet and even tenor of his brother officer's general mood, and drew his own conclusions therefrom, and these were that he was not progressing favourably in his suit with the brilliant young widow. 'If a widow she really is,' said Jerry one day after evening parade, when Dalton's groom brought his horse round to the mess hut, and he was about to ride over to Chilcote Grange. 'How--what the devil do you mean, Jerry?' asked Dalton, greatly ruffled. 'Only that a rumour is abroad that has in it a deuced unpleasant sound.' 'To what effect?' 'That her husband is not dead--that she is not a widow at all--that he ran away from her, or something of that kind. Have you not remarked how she sneers at matrimony? Egad, I hope she is not _divorcée_!' 'Nonsense, Jerry; how dare you let your tongue run on thus!' 'Little birds sing strange songs sometimes.'