“Ah, that’s just the point which you have never thought it worth your while to test. Yet, who can say that it might not have proved to be very much your business indeed?” Then to himself he added: “This seems to me a little matter which may be worth inquiring into. But, good gracious! to think that there should be such imbeciles in the world as this niece of mine!” CHAPTER XIV. THE CAPTAIN TAKES A LITTLE JOURNEY The more Captain Verinder turned over in his mind the chief points of the story told him by his niece, the more convinced he became that it was indeed, as he had remarked to himself at the time, a matter worth inquiring into. The Captain, when once he had made up his mind to any particular course of action, was not a man to let the grass grow under his feet. His first proceeding was to seek out a certain billiard-room acquaintance of the name of Tring—a man who had got through two fortunes in his time and was now reduced to earning a scanty livelihood by literary hackwork at the British Museum. Having given him the particulars of the information he required, the Captain met him by appointment a couple of days later. “The only person I can find,” said Tring, “of the name specified by you that seems likely to answer to your requirements, is a certain Sir Gilbert Clare, of Withington Chase, Hertfordshire, the representative of one of the oldest titles in the kingdom.” Captain Verinder, having taken a note of the name and address in his pocket-book and paid the other for his trouble, went his way. His next step, the following morning, was to call on Giovanna with a request for the loan of ten pounds. “’Tis not for myself I ask it,” he said with one of the grandiloquent airs in which he sometimes indulged. “It will be expended to the last farthing in your service, my dear. I refrain from saying more at present, save that in the course of a few days I hope to be the bearer of news that will—well, that will astonish you very considerably.” Vanna raised no objection to lending her uncle the amount he asked for, although by this time she had seen enough of him to feel pretty sure that she would never see a shilling of it back. In the course of the following day Captain Verinder booked himself by train to Mapleford, which station he had ascertained to be the nearest to the point he was bound for. His object was to try to discover whether the John Alexander Clare whom his niece had married so many years before was in any way related to, or connected with, Sir Gilbert Clare of Withington Chase.