As he paused in the passage revolving the question and seeking half a crown to give to the man whom he had suspected without reason, a dull sound as of a muffled hammer beating wood caught his ear. He had heard it indistinctly in the parlour--it appeared to come from the upper floor; but he had given no heed to it. "What's that?" he asked, idly, as he drew out a coin.
"My journeyman. Perhaps you'd like to see him," Grocott continued with a malicious grin. "May be he's the young lady you're looking for. Oh, make yourself at home, sir," he added bitterly. "A poor man mustn't grumble if his house isn't his own and his lodgers are insulted."
"Here," Coke said, and dropping the half-crown into the dirty hand extended for it, he passed out. Instantly the door clanged behind him, the chain was put up, a bolt was shot; but although Sir Hervey stood a moment uncertain which way he should go, or what he should do next, he did not notice these extreme precautions, nor the pale, ugly face of triumph that watched him from the window as he turned south to go to Arlington Street.
At the corner of Bolton Row Sir Hervey paused. He felt, to be candid, a trifle awkward in the _rôle_ of knight-errant, a part reserved in those days for Lord Peterborough. The Northeys' heartless cynicism, and their instant and cruel desertion of the girl, had stirred the chivalry that underlay his cold exterior. But from the first he had been aware that his status in the matter was ill-defined; he now began to see it in a worse, an absurd light. He had taken the field in the belief that Sophia had not stayed in Davies Street; that Hawkesworth, therefore, was beside the question; and that whatever folly she had committed, she had not altogether compromised herself; he now found the data on which he had acted painfully erroneous. She had not stayed in Davies Street, because she had not gone to Davies Street. But she might have joined Hawkesworth elsewhere; she might by this time be his wife; she might be gone with him never to return!
In that event Coke began to see that his part in the matter would prove to be worse than ridiculous; and he paused at the corner of Bolton Row, uncertain whether he should not go home and erase with a sore heart a foolish child's face from his memory. His was a day of coarse things; of duchesses who talked as fishwives talk now, of madcap maids of honour, such as she--