“Of course you hate him and all that,” said Nutty, “but after all you will be getting five million dollars that ought to have come to—”
That was all that Bill heard, for he had stumbled across the hall and was in his room, sitting on the bed and staring into the darkness with burning eyes. The door banged behind him.
So it was true!
There came a knock at the door. It was repeated. The handle turned.
“Is that you, Bill?”
It was Elizabeth’s voice. He could just see her, framed in the doorway.
“Bill!”
His throat was dry. Something seemed to be blocking it up. He swallowed, and found that he could speak.
“Yes?”
“Did you just come in?”
“Yes.”
The door handle shook. Outside a whippoorwill had begun its monotonous cry. The sound seemed to beat on his brain like a hammer.
“Then—you heard?”
“Yes.”
There was a long silence. Then the door closed gently and he heard her go upstairs.
XXII
When Bill woke next morning it was ten o’clock; and his first emotion, on a day that was to be crowded with emotions of various kinds, was one of shame. The desire to do the fitting thing is innate in man, and it struck Bill, as he hurried through his toilet, that he must be a shallow, coarse-fibered sort of person, lacking in the finer feelings, not to have passed a sleepless night. There was something revolting in the thought that in circumstances which would have made sleep an impossibility for most men he had slept like a log. He did not do himself the justice to recollect that he had had a singularly strenuous day, and that it is Nature’s business, which she performs quietly and unromantically, to send sleep to tired men, regardless of their private feelings; and it was in a mood of dissatisfaction with the quality of his soul that he left his room. He had a general feeling that he was not much of a chap and that when he died—which he trusted would be shortly—the world would be well rid of him. He felt humble and depressed and hopeless.
Elizabeth met him in the passage. At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.
Except for a pallor strange to her face, and a drawn look about the eyes, there was nothing to show that all was not for the best with Elizabeth in a best of all possible worlds. If she did not look jaunty she at least looked composed. She greeted Bill with a smile.
“I didn’t wake you. I thought I would let you sleep on.”
The words had the effect of lending an additional clarity and firmness of outline to the picture of himself which Bill had already drawn in his mind—of a soulless creature sunk in hoggish slumber.
“We’ve had breakfast. Nutty has gone for a walk. Isn’t he wonderful nowadays! I’ve kept your breakfast warm for you.”
Bill protested. He might be capable of sleep, but he was not going to sink to food.
“Not for me, thanks,” he said hollowly.
“Come along.”
“Honestly—”
“Come along.”
He followed her meekly. How grimly practical women were! They let nothing interfere with the essentials of life. It seemed all wrong. Nevertheless, he breakfasted well and gratefully, Elizabeth watching him in silence across the table.
“Finished?”
“Yes, thanks.”
She hesitated for a moment.
“Well, Bill, I’ve slept on it. Things are in rather a muddle, aren’t they! I think I had better begin by explaining what led up to those words you heard Nutty say last night. Won’t you smoke?”
“No, thanks.”
“You’ll feel better if you do.”
“I couldn’t.”
A bee had flown in through the open window. She followed it with her eye as it blundered about the room. It flew out again into the sunshine. She turned to Bill again.
“They were supposed to be words of consolation,” she said.
Bill said nothing.
“Nutty, you see, has his own peculiar way of looking at things, and it didn’t occur to him that I might have promised to marry you because I loved you. He took it for granted that I had done it to save the Boyd home. He has been very anxious from the first that I should marry you. I think that that must have been why he asked you down here. He found out in New York, you know, who you were. Someone you met at supper recognized you, and told Nutty. So, as far as that is concerned, the girl you were speaking to at the gate last night was right.”
He started.
“You heard her?”
“I couldn’t help it. She meant me to hear. She was raising her voice quite unnecessarily if she did not mean to include me in the conversation. I had gone in to find Nutty and he was out, and I was coming back to you. That’s how I was there. You didn’t see me because your back was turned. She saw me.”
Bill met her eyes.
“You don’t ask who she was?”
“It doesn’t matter who she was. It’s what she said that matters. She said that we knew you were Lord Dawlish.”
“Did you know?”
“Nutty told me two or three days ago.” Her voice shook and a flush came into her face. “You probably won’t believe it, but the news made absolutely no difference to me one way or the other. I had always imagined Lord Dawlish as a treacherous, adventurous sort of man, because I couldn’t see how a man who was not like that could have persuaded Uncle Ira to leave him his money. But after knowing you even for this short time, I knew you were quite the opposite of that, and I remembered that the
