The Leopard's Spots by Fred M. White — Read

The long tangle had unwound itself before magistrates, and subsequently at the Assizes, and when it was all done and finished with the woman Kesler and her companion vanished from the scene of their exploits to a place where they would be looked after for the next ten years to come. And the real Geoffrey Hawthorne had vanished, too. He would like to have stayed long enough to explain matters from his point of view, but almost immediately after breakfast the next morning he had been summoned to London to give certain information at Scotland Yard, and afterwards the representative of Silas Oakes waited upon him with a deal of business detail which in the circumstances could not be postponed. And after a good night's rest Hawthorne came to himself a different man. All the sense of oppression and mental mistiness had vanished, leaving him clear and vigorous. The healthy life he had been living for some days at Minchin Common had not been without their effect, and the regular exercise he had taken was responsible for the rest. It had been his intention to stay in town for a day or two, and then get back to Minchin Common, where he would have a good deal to say in view of the fact that he now had the clearest recollection of everything that happened since he left America, and the reasons that induced him to cross the Atlantic.

But many reasons interfered. To begin with, the best part of a week was passed in going through a maze of documents and figures, and after that there came an urgent summons from the lawyers in New York, so that, almost at a moment's notice, Hawthorne had to return to the States again to settle a number of pressing affairs on that side.