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AN ILL-ASSORTED COUPLE
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"If I were you," he said, "I'd spend my time looking for a situation, instead of hunting about for this supposed fortune of your brother's."

Barnes took the sovereign with hot, trembling fingers, and deposited it carefully in his waistcoat pocket. Then he smiled in a somewhat mysterious manner.

"Mr. Wrayson," he said, "perhaps I'm not so far off, after all. Other people can find out what he knows," he added, pointing at Heneage. "He ain't the only one who can see through a brick wall. Say, Mr. Wrayson, you've always treated me fair and square," he added, leaning towards him and dropping his voice. "Can you tell me this? Did Morry ever go swaggering about calling himself by any other name—bit more tony, eh?"

Wrayson started. For a moment he did not reply. Thoughts were rushing through his brain. Was he forestalled in his search for this girl? Meanwhile, Barnes watched him with a cunning gleam in his deep-set eyes.

"Such as Augustus Howard, eh? Real tony name that for Morry!"

Wrayson, with a sudden instinctive knowledge, brushed him on one side, and half standing up, gazed across the room at the corner from which his questioner had come. With her back against the wall, her cheap prettiness marred by her red eyes, her ill-arranged hair, and ugly hat, sat, beyond a doubt, the girl for whom he had waited in the promenade.