She assented and dismissed him with scant courtesy, being a prey to extreme anxiety. She had never entertained any doubt as to her jurisdiction over the children and the jewels, and she had never correctly comprehended the changed position in which the death of her husband places a woman of rank. She wrote to Beaumont a harsh and imperious letter in the third person, ordering him to come to her at once and bring her property with him. In her eyes, whatever he might be in his own, he was only a tradesman. Beaumont knew very well that he had done an invalid thing, and that the signature of the lady locked up in his safe was in law worth nothing. But he was used to doing illegal things, he always found they answered best. The transaction was _bonâ fide_ on his part, and the jewel was in his hands. Before the Duke of Otterbourne would lose it, and let the matter be brought before a tribunal, Beaumont knew very well that he himself should be repaid. She could not repay him, her husband could not, but the family, the head of the family, would. So he had always reasoned. “_La famille! C’est le magôt de ces gens là_,” he said to himself. The death of the Duke of Otterbourne had disagreeably surprised him, and made him take a trip across the Channel, a fidgety, worrying little journey which he at all times disliked, for he was never comfortable out of the Rue de la Paix. He had scarcely reached London when the newspapers informed him of the illness, and in a few days of the demise, of the late duke’s successor. He was much too well-bred to intrude on the retreat of the widowed duchess. He knew that the retreat would not last very long. He amused himself by going to see the imitation jewelry of Birmingham, and was lost in wonder that a nation which has the art of India under its eyes can outrage heaven and earth by gewgaws meet for savages. Then, having taken precautions so as to be informed of all which might be done with the Otterbourne heirlooms, he returned to the home of his heart and awaited events. When some few days later he received her curt summons he was extremely astonished, but agreeably so; he concluded he was about to receive his money. No one, he thought, would write in that imperious tone who was not prepared to pay to the uttermost farthing. So he reluctantly again undertook that fidgeting little journey of Calais-Douvres which the wit and wisdom of two nations are content to leave in chaos whilst they ridicule the Chinese for not making good roads. He read her letter again on the steamer; it was so very uncivil that it could only mean payment, immediate and complete. Why not? The Otterbourne family was after all a very illustrious one. CHAPTER XXI. “Poor papa is deaded,” said Jack to Boo on his return to town; in the tenderness of his heart he was beginning to forget the dead man’s pinches and to pity his retirement from the world. “I know; and I do hate black so,” said Boo twitching wrathfully at her frock.