“You will remember, Mrs Ogilvy--it is a thing you would be little likely to forget--a commission that you charged me with, in confidence--it is now a number of years ago----”
She raised herself suddenly in her chair, and drew a long breath. The expression of her countenance changed in a moment. She said nothing, nor was it necessary: her look, the changed pose of her person leaning towards him, her two hands clasped together on the arm of her chair, were enough.
“You must not expect too much, my dear lady--it is perhaps nothing at all, perhaps another person altogether; but at least, for the first time, it appears to me that it is something in the shape of a clue. I have been very cautious, according to your directions, but all the same I have made many inquiries: and none of them have ever come to anything.”
“This, if there’s anything in it, is no credit of mine, it is pure accident.” Mr Somerville paused here to feel in his pockets for something. He tried his breast-pocket, and his tail-pockets, and all the other mysterious places in which things can be hidden away. “I must have left it in my overcoat,” he said. “One moment, if you permit, and I’ll get it before I say more.”
Mrs Ogilvy made no movement, while she sat there and waited. She closed her eyes, and there came from the depths of her bosom a low sigh, which was something like the breath of patience concentrated and condensed. She was perfectly still when he went back again, full of apologies: after having made a great rustling and searching of pockets in the outer hall, he came back with a newspaper in his hand.
“We have a good deal of business with America,” he said. “I can scarcely tell you how it began. One of our clients had a son that went out, and got on very well in business, and one thing followed another; what with remittances home, and expenses out, and money for the starting of farms, and so forth,--and then being laid open to the temptation of American investments, which, as a rule, pay very well, and all our poor customers just give us no peace till we put their money on them. This makes it very necessary for us to know the state of the American stock market, and how this and that is going. You will not maybe quite understand, but so it is.”