Hugo looked innocent and attentive, but made no comment. His aunt kissed him with more warmth than usual when she said good-night. She had seldom kissed her sons after they reached manhood; but she caressed Hugo very frequently. She was softer in her manner with him than she had been even with Richard.
"Take care of yourself in London," she said to him. "Do you want any money?"
"No, thank you, Aunt Margaret. I shall be back in three days if I start to-morrow—at least, I think so. I'll telegraph if I am detained."
"Yes, do so. To-morrow is the seventeenth. You will be back by the twentieth?"
"If my business is done," said Hugo. And then he went back to his little experiments in caligraphy.
It was not until the afternoon of the 18th of August that he found himself at the door of No. 14, Tarragon-street. It was a dingy-looking house in a dismal-looking street. Hugo shivered a little as he pulled the tarnished bell-handle. "How can people live in streets like this?" he said to himself, with a slight contemptuous shrug of his shoulders.
"Mr. Vasari?" he said, interrogatively, as a downcast-looking woman came to the door.
"Yes, sir. What name, sir, if you please?"
"Say that a gentleman from Scotland wishes to see him."
The woman gave him a keen look, as if she knew something of the errand upon which Dino Vasari had come to her house; but said nothing, and ushered him at once into a sitting-room on the ground-floor. The room was curtained so heavily that it seemed nearly dark. Hugo could not see whether it was tenanted by more than one person; of one he was sure, because that one person came to meet him with outstretched hands and eager words of greeting.