This is what the butler had whispered in Mrs. Treverton’s ear, handing her at the same time a card on which there was a name written—
Colonel Mansfield.
At sight of this name Laura rose, whispered her excuse to Mrs. Clare, and glided quietly from the room.
“Where have you left this gentleman?” she asked the butler.
“I left him in the hall, ma’am. I did not feel sure you would see him.”
“He is related to my family,” said Laura, faltering a little; “I cannot refuse to see him.”
This brief conversation occurred in the corridor leading from the servants’ hall to the front of the house. A tall man, wrapped in a loose, rough great coat was standing just inside the hall door, while Trimmer’s subordinate, a rustic youth in a dark brown livery, stood at ease near the fireplace, evidently placed there to protect the mansion from any evil designs on the part of the unknown intruder.
Laura went to the stranger and gave him her hand, without a word. She was very pale, and it was evident the visitor was as unwelcome as he was unexpected.
“You had better come to my study,” she said. “There is a good fire there. Trimmer, take candles to the study, and some wine.”
“I’d rather have brandy,” said the stranger. “I am chilled to the bone. An eight hours’ journey in a cattle truck is enough to freeze the youngest blood. For a man of my age, and with chronic neuralgia, it means martyrdom.”
“I am very sorry,” murmured Laura, with a look in which compassion struggled against disgust. “Come this way. We can talk quietly in my room.”
She went upstairs, the stranger following close at her heels, to the gallery out of which John Treverton’s study, which was also her own favourite sitting-room, opened. It was the room where she and her husband had met for the first time, two years ago, on just such a night as this. It adjoined the bedroom where John Treverton was now lying. She had no desire that he should be a witness to her interview with this visitor of tonight; but she had a sense of protection in the knowledge that her husband would be within call. Hitherto, on the rare occasions when she had been constrained to meet this man, she had confronted him alone, defenceless; and she had never felt her loneliness so keenly as at those times.
“I ought to have told John the whole truth,” she said to herself; “but how could I—how could I bear to acknowledge—”
She glanced backward, with a suppressed shudder, at the man following her. They were at the door of the study by this time. She opened it, and he went in after her and shut the door behind him.
A fire was burning cheerily on the pretty, bright-looking hearth, antique in its quaint ornamentation, modern in the artistic beauty of its painted tiles and low brass fender. There were candles on the mantelpiece and on the table, where an old-fashioned spirit bottle on a silver tray cheered the soul of the wayfarer. He filled a glass of brandy and drained it without a word.
He gave a deep sigh of contentment or relief as he set down the glass.
“That’s a little bit better,” he said, and then he threw off his overcoat and scarf, and planted himself with his back to the fire, and the face which he turned to the light was the face of Mr. Desrolles.
The man had aged within the last six months. Every line in his face had deepened. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes haggard and bloodshot. The sands of life run fast for a man whose chief nourishment is brandy.
“Well,” he exclaimed, in a hard, husky voice. “You do not welcome me very warmly, my child.”
“I did not expect you.”
“The surprise should be all the pleasanter. Picture to yourself now our meeting, as it would be represented in a novel or a stage play. You would throw your arms wide apart, shriek, and rush to my breast. Do you remember Julia in the Hunchback? With what a yell of rapture she flings herself into Master Walter’s arms.”
“Do you remember what Master Walter had been to Julia?” asked Laura, looking steadily into the haggard eyes, which shifted their gaze as she looked.
“Real life is flat and tame compared with a stage play,” said Desrolles. “For my part I am heartily sick of it.”
“I am sorry to see you looking so ill.”
“I am a perambulating bundle of aches. There is not a muscle in my body that has not its particular pain.”
“Can you find no relief for this complaint? Are there not baths in Germany that might cure you?”
“I understand,” interrupted Desrolles. “You would be glad to get me out of the way.”
“I should be glad to lessen your suffering. When I last wrote to you I sent you a much larger remittance than I had ever done before, and I told you that I should allow you six hundred a year, to be paid quarterly. I thought that would be enough for all your requirements. I am grieved to hear that you have been obliged to ride in a third-class carriage in cold weather.”
“I have been unlucky,” answered Desrolles. “I have been at Boulogne; a pleasant place, but peopled with knaves. I fell among thieves, and got cleaned out. You must give me fifty or a hundred tonight, and you must not deduct it from your next quarterly payment. You are now a lady of fortune, and could afford to do three times as much as you are doing for me. Why did you not tell me you were married? Pretty treatment that from a daughter.”
“Father,” exclaimed Laura, looking at him with the same calm gaze, which his shifting eyes had refused to meet just now, “do you want me
