"
"I don't know," he answered confusedly. "I did not like to; and, besides,
a policeman thought I was a suspicious character and told me to move on."
"Dear me, Mr. Meeson; you must have been having a good look at us."
Here Augusta interposed, fearing least her admirer--for with an unerring
instinct, she now guessed how matters stood--should say something
foolish. A young man who is capable of standing to stare at a house in
Hanover-square is, she thought, evidently capable of anything.
"I was surprised to see you yesterday," she said. "How did you know we
were coming?"
Eustace told her that he had seen it in the _Globe_. "I am sure you
cannot have been so surprised as I was," he went on, "I had made sure
that you were drowned. I went up to Birmingham to call on you after you
had gone, and found that you had vanished and left no address. The
maid-servant declared that you had sailed in a ship called the 'Conger
Eel'--which I afterwards found out was Kangaroo. And then she went down;
and after a long time they published a full list of the passengers and
your name was not among them, and I thought that after all you might have
got off the ship or something. Then, some days afterwards, came a
telegram from Albany, in Australia, giving the names of Lady Holmhurst
and the others who were saved, and specially mentioning 'Miss
Smithers--the novelist' and Lord Holmhurst as being among the drowned,
and that is how the dreadful suspense came to an end.
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