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Five per cent and first-class security were, she knew, matters of business; and though Mr Rubb had winked his eye at her as he spoke of them, leaning forward in his chair and looking at her not at all as a man of business, but quite in a friendly way, yet she had felt that she was so far safe.
Miss Mackenzie could give him no information on this point, and therefore he went on: "But you must tell me what he has said, and what it is he wants us to do. For your sake, if you ask us, Miss Mackenzie, we'll do anything. We'll sell the coats off our backs, if you wish it. You shall never lose one shilling by Rubb and Mackenzie as long as I have anything to do with the firm.
Mr Rubb, junior, was a tradesman who had come to her on business, and having done his business, why did he not go away? Nevertheless, Miss Mackenzie answered him when he asked questions, and allowed herself to be seduced into a conversation. "Yes, upon my honour," he said, looking out of the window into the Montpelier Gardens, "a very nice situation indeed.
Her claims to be called "Mademoiselle" were not very strong, as she had lived in Finsbury Square all her life. Her father was connected in trade with the Rubb and Mackenzie firm, and dealt, I think, in oil. She was introduced with great ceremony, and having heard that Miss Mackenzie lived at Littlebath, went off at score about the pleasures of that delicious place.
It came to pass at this time that Mr Rubb, junior, visited his dying partner almost daily, and was always left alone with him for some time. When these visits were made Miss Mackenzie would descend to the room in which her sister-in-law was sitting, and there would be some conversation between them about Mr Rubb and his affairs.
She, if she were entitled to make any boast about herself and she was by no means inclined to such boastings might at any rate boast that she was a lady. Now, Mr Rubb was not a gentleman. He was not a gentleman by position. She knew that well enough, and she thought that she had also discovered that he was not quite a gentleman in his manners and mode of speech.
And he did not ask her again, but turned his face from her and thought of the bitterness of his death-bed. That evening, when she went down to tea, she met Samuel Rubb standing at the drawing-room door. "There is no one here," he said; "will you mind coming in? Has your brother spoken to you?" She had followed him into the room, and he had closed the door as he asked the question.
It certainly did seem to her that when her money was borrowed somebody must have known that the promised security would not be forthcoming; but perhaps that somebody was old Rubb, whom, as she did not know him, she was quite ready to regard as the villain in the play that was being acted. Her own money, too, was a thing of the past.
Of Mr Samuel Rubb, junior, we must say a few words. His first acquaintance with our heroine was not made under circumstances favourable to him. In that matter of the loan, he departed very widely from the precept which teaches us that honesty is the best policy.
Her lawyers wrote back, advising her to refer Mr Rubb, junior, to them. On the day named in her brother's letter, Mr Samuel Rubb, junior, arrived at Littlebath, and called upon Miss Mackenzie in the Paragon. Miss Mackenzie had been brought up with contempt and almost with hatred for the Rubb family.
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