With Mijnheer it was different; right
was right, and wrong wrong to him, no matter who the persons concerned
might be.
"Then, sir," he said, growing somewhat red, "I am glad indeed that I
cannot tell you where she is."
Rawson-Clew looked up with faint admiration, righteous indignation, or
at all events the open expression of it, was a discourtesy practically
extinct with the people among whom he usually lived. He felt respect
for the old bulb grower who would be guilty of it.
"I am sorry you should think so badly of me," he said; "I can only
assure you that it is without reason. You do not believe me? I suppose
it is quite useless for me to say that my sole motive in seeking Miss
Polkington is a desire to prevent her from coming to any harm?"
"She will, I should think, come to less harm without you than with
you," Mijnheer retorted; and Rawson-Clew, seeing as plainly as Julia
had yesterday, the impossibility of making the position clear, did not
attempt it.
"I hope you may be right," he said, "but I am afraid she will be in
difficulties. She had little money, and no friends in Holland, and
was, I have reason to believe, on such terms with her family that it
would not suit her to return to England."
"Ah, but she must have gone to England!" Vrouw Van Heigen cried. "She
went away in a carriage as one does when one goes to the station to
start on a journey.
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