“There’s Mr. Crump,” said Mrs. Toogood. “Of course he doesn’t like it, and what can I say to him when he comes to me?” This was not quite fair on the part of Mrs. Toogood, as Mr. Crump had not troubled her even once as yet since her husband’s departure.
What was Johnny to do, when he left Tavistock Square? His club was open to him. Should he go to his club, play a game of billiards, and have some supper? When he asked himself the question he knew that he would not go to his club, and yet he pretended to doubt about it, as he made his way to a cabstand in Tottenham Court Road. It would be slow, he told himself, to go to his club. He would have gone to see Lily Dale, only that his intimacy with Mrs. Thorne was not sufficient to justify his calling at her house between nine and ten o’clock at night. But, as he must go somewhere—and as his intimacy with Lady Demolines was, he thought, sufficient to justify almost anything—he would go to Bayswater. I regret to say that he had written a mysterious note from Paris to Madalina Demolines, saying that he should be in London on this very night, and that it was just on the cards that he might make his way up to Porchester Terrace before he went to bed. The note was mysterious, because it had neither beginning nor ending. It did not contain even initials. It was written like a telegraph message, and was about as long. It was the kind of thing Miss Demolines liked, Johnny thought; and there could be no reason why he should not gratify her. It was her favourite game. Some people like whist, some like croquet, and some like intrigue. Madalina would probably have called it romance—because by nature she was romantic. John, who was made of sterner stuff, laughed at this. He knew that there was no romance in it. He knew that he was only amusing himself, and gratifying her at the same time, by a little innocent pretence. He told himself that it was his nature to prefer the society of women to that of men. He would have liked the society of Lily Dale, no doubt, much better than that of Miss Demolines; but as the society of Lily Dale was not to be had at that moment, the society of Miss Demolines was the best substitute within his reach. So he got into a cab and had himself driven to Porchester Terrace. “Is Lady Demolines at home?” he said to the servant. He always asked for Lady Demolines. But the page who was accustomed to open the door for him was less false, being young, and would now tell him, without any further fiction, that Miss Madalina was in the drawing-room. Such was the answer he got from the page on this evening. What Madalina did with her mother on these occasions he had never yet discovered. There used to be some little excuses given about Lady Demolines’ state of health, but latterly Madalina had discontinued her references to her mother’s headaches. She was standing in the centre of the drawing-room when he entered it, with both her hands raised, and an almost terrible expression of mystery in her face. Her hair, however, had been very carefully arranged so as to fall with copious carelessness down her shoulders, and altogether she was looking her best. “Oh, John,” she said. She called him John by accident in the tumult of the moment. “Have you heard what has happened? But of course you have heard it.”
“Heard what? I have heard nothing,” said Johnny, arrested almost in the doorway by the nature of the question—and partly also, no doubt, by the tumult of the moment. He had no idea how terrible a tragedy was in truth in store for him; but he perceived that the moment was to be tumultuous, and that he must carry himself accordingly.
“Come in, and close the door,” she said. He came in and closed the door. “Do you mean to say that you haven’t heard what has happened in Hook Court?”
“No;—what has happened in Hook Court?” Miss Demolines threw herself back into an armchair, closed her eyes, and clasped both her hands upon her forehead. “What has happened in Hook Court?” said Johnny, walking up to her.
“I do not think I can bring myself to tell you,” she answered.
Then he took one of her hands down from her forehead and held it in his—which she allowed passively. She was thinking, no doubt, of something far different from that.
“I never saw you looking better in my life,” said Johnny.
“Don’t,” said she. “How can you talk in that way, when my heart is bleeding—bleeding.” Then she pulled away her hand, and again clasped it with the other upon her forehead.
“But why is your heart bleeding? What has happened in Hook Court?” Still she answered nothing, but she sobbed violently and the heaving of her bosom showed how tumultuous was the tumult within it. “You don’t mean to say that Dobbs Broughton has come to grief;—that he’s to be sold out?”
“Man,” said Madalina, jumping from her chair, standing at her full height, and stretching
