“You are the head of the household,” I now ventured, “and the proper one to attend to the final offices towards one who has done so much for you.”
There was something strange in the look which she gave me. “It is true,” she assented. Then, with a grand turn of her body, and a quick air of determination: “I am desirous of being worthy of your good opinion. I will go back to my cousin, Mr. Raymond.”
I felt my spirits rise a little; I took her by the hand. “May that cousin have no need of the comfort which I am now sure you will be ready to give her.”
Her hand dropped from mine. “I mean to do my duty,” was her cold response.
As I descended the stoop, I met a certain thin and fashionably dressed young man, who gave me a very sharp look as he passed. As he wore his clothes a little too conspicuously for the perfect gentleman, and as I had some remembrance of having seen him at the inquest, I set him down for a man in Mr. Gryce’s employ, and hasted on towards the avenue; when what was my surprise to find on the corner another person, who, while pretending to be on the look out for a car, cast upon me, as I approached, a furtive glance of intense inquiry. As this latter was, without question, a gentleman, I felt some annoyance, and, walking quietly up to him, asked if he found my countenance familiar, that he scrutinized it so closely.
“I find it a very agreeable one,” was his unexpected reply, as he turned from me and walked down the avenue.
Nettled, and in no small degree mortified, at the disadvantage in which his courtesy had placed me, I stood watching him as he disappeared, asking myself who and what he was. For he was not only a gentleman, but a marked one; possessing features of unusual symmetry as well as a form of peculiar elegance. Not so very young—he might well be forty—there were yet evident on his face the impress of youth’s strongest emotions, not a curve of his chin nor a glance of his eye betraying in any way the slightest leaning towards ennui, though face and figure were of that type which seems most to invite and cherish it.
“He can have no connection with the police force,” thought I; “nor is it by any means certain that he knows me, or is interested in my affairs; but I shall not soon forget him, for all that.”
The summons from Eleanore Leavenworth came about eight o’clock in the evening. It was brought by Thomas, and read as follows:
“Come, Oh, come! I—” there breaking off in a tremble, as if the pen had fallen from a nerveless hand.