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Vavasor found himself sitting for an apparently interminable number of minutes in Mr Tombe's dingy chamber, and was coughed at, and wheezed at, till he begun to be tired of his position; moreover, when tired, he showed his impatience. "Perhaps you'll let us write you a line when we have looked into the matter?" suggested Mr Tombe. "I'd rather know at once," said Vavasor.
My heart is yours now as it has been since I knew you." Then he again just touched her hand, and left her before she had been able to answer a word. Mr Tombe's Advice Alice sat alone for an hour without moving when John Grey had left her, and the last words which he had uttered were sounding in her ears all the time, "My heart is still yours, as it has been since I knew you."
No precise caution had been given to him, but he had become aware that the matter was being managed through an agency that was not recognized by his client; and as that agency was simply a vehicle of money which found its way into Mr Scruby's pocket, he should have held his tongue. But Mr Tombe's name escaped from him, and Vavasor immediately questioned him.
Mr Tombe was a remarkable man in his way. Being in these ways a man of note, John Grey had spoken of him to Alice, and his name had filtered through Alice and her cousin Kate to George Vavasor. George seldom forgot things or names, and when he heard Mr Tombe's name mentioned in connection with his own money matters, he remembered that Mr Tombe was John Grey's lawyer.
"I have come here from Mr Tombe's office in the City," said Vavasor, "to ask you of what nature has been the interference which you have taken in my money matters?" This was a question which Mr Grey could not answer very quickly.
"No;" Mr Grey had said, when Mr Vavasor had asked as to the peculiar nature of Mr Tombe's business; "he is not specially an ecclesiastical lawyer. He had a partner at Ely, and was always employed by my father, and by most of the clergy there." Mr Tombe had evinced no surprise, no dismay, and certainly no mock delicacy, when the whole affair was under discussion.
In the first place it was altogether unexpected; in the next place he did not know what Mr Tombe had told, and what he had not told; and then, before he replied, he must think how much of the truth he was bound to tell in answer to a question so put to him. "Do you say that you have come from Mr Tombe?" he asked. "I think you heard me say so. I have come here direct from Mr Tombe's chambers.
"Well, upon my word, you've taken me a little by surprise. Let me see. Pinkle, Pinkle." Pinkle was a clerk who sat in an inner room, and Mr Tombe's effort to call him seemed to be most ineffectual. But Pinkle understood the sound, and came. "Pinkle, didn't we pay some money into Hock and Block's a few weeks since, to the credit of Mr George Vavasor?"
And as he got into a cab, and had himself driven off to the neighbourhood of Doctors' Commons, he gave himself credit for much fine manly feeling. Mr Tombe's chambers were found without difficulty, and, as it happened, Mr Tombe was there. The lawyer rose from his chair as Vavasor entered, and bowed his powdered head very meekly as he asked his visitor to sit down. "Mr Vavasor; oh, yes.
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