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Page 33
"Let you!" exclaimed Harper. "By Jove!--we're only too glad to have
anybody out here--aren't we, Nesta?"
"We shall always be glad to see Mr. Collingwood," said Nesta.
Collingwood went away with that last intimation warm in his memory. He
had an idea that the girl meant what she said--and for a moment he was
sorry that he was going to India. He might have settled down at Barford
there and then, and--but at that he laughed at himself.
"A young woman with several thousands a year of her own!" he said. "Of
course, she'll marry some big pot in the county. They feel a little
lonely, those two, just now, because everything's new to them, and
they're new to their changed circumstances. But when I get back--ah!--I
guess they'll have got plenty of people around them."
And he determined, being a young man of sense, not to think any
more--for already he had thought a good deal of Nesta Mallathorpe, until
he returned from his Indian travels. Let him attend to his business, and
leave possibilities until they came nearer.
"All the same." he mused, as he drew near the town again, "I'm pretty
sure I shall come back here next spring--I feel like it."
He called in at Eldrick's office on his way to the hotel, to take some
documents which had been preparing for him. It was then late in the
afternoon, and no one but Pratt was there--Pratt, indeed, had been
waiting until Collingwood called.
"Going back to town, Mr. Collingwood?" asked Pratt as he handed over a
big envelope. "When shall we have the pleasure of seeing you again,
sir?"
Something in the clerk's tone made Collingwood think--he could not tell
why--that Pratt was fishing for information. And--also for reasons which
he could not explain--Collingwood had taken a curious dislike to Pratt,
and was not inclined to give him any confidence.
"I don't know," he answered, a little icily. "I am leaving for India
next week."
He bade the clerk a formal farewell and went off, and Pratt locked the
office door and slowly followed him downstairs.
"To India!" he said to himself, watching the young barrister's
retreating figure. "To India, eh? For a time--or for--what?"
Anyway, that was good news, Pratt had seen in Collingwood a possible
rival.
CHAPTER X
THE FOOT-BRIDGE
Collingwood's return to London was made on a Friday evening: next day he
began the final preparations for his departure to India on the following
Thursday. He was looking forward to his journey and his stay in India
with keen expectation. He would have the society of a particularly
clever and brilliant man; they were to break their journey in Italy and
in Egypt; he would enjoy exceptional facilities for seeing the native
life of India; he would gain valuable experience. It was a chance at
which any young man would have jumped, and Collingwood had been greatly
envied when it was known that Sir John Standridge had offered it to him.
And yet he was conscious that if he could have done precisely what he
desired, he would have stayed longer at Barford, in order to see more of
Nesta Mallathorpe. Already it seemed a long time to the coming spring,
when he would be back--and free to go North again.
But Collingwood was fated to go North once more much sooner than he had
dreamed of. As he sat at breakfast in his rooms on the Monday morning
after his departure from Barford, turning over his newspaper with no
particular aim or interest, his attention was suddenly and sharply
arrested by a headline. Even that headline might not have led him to
read what lay beneath. But in the same instant in which he saw it he
also saw a name--Mallathorpe. In the next he knew that heavy trouble had
fallen on Normandale Grange, the very day after he had left it.
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