In other words, you behold in
me, so far as regards this affair, respectability and rectitude
personified. I may even choose to give our friend Mr. Cullen a leg up."
I was relieved to hear it and told him so.
"I presume," I said, "that Mademoiselle Blanche, of Bond Street, is
identical with the young lady who talked to us at Stephano's the other
night?"
"Say, you're becoming perfectly wonderful at the art of deduction!" my
future father-in-law declared. "Same person!"
"She seems quite attractive," I admitted, "with a taste for pink roses, I
think."
Mr. Bundercombe appeared to regard my remark as frivolous. He moved his
chair, however, and brought it closer to mine.
"I dare say you remember," he went on, "how the young lady proposed to me
that night that I should finance a little venture in which she and her
sleepy-eyed friend opposite were interested."
I nodded.
"Yes, I remember that."
"From that," Mr. Bundercombe continued, "she went on to suggest that I
should help her in the ambition of her life, which, it seems, was to take
a single room for manicuring a few clients. In an ordinary way I should
have refused that, too; and, if she had been hard up, begged to be allowed
to oblige her with a trifling loan--and ended the matter in that way.
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