When he went away Carleigh got up with a curious new kind of pain about his heart and head which he was puzzled to account for.
Perhaps it was the smoke he had inhaled, or perhaps it was Mrs. Darling's condition. He wasn't sure which. At any rate, it was very real and very distressing.
He had bathed and scrubbed very carefully, as he thought, before lying down. But the morning light revealed stains and blotches invisible by candlelight—there was no electricity at Cross Saddle—and it took him some time to remove them.
As a consequence he found, when he went down to breakfast, that nearly every one was there before him. There was a general hubbub in the room that was nigh to deafening.
Questions were flying about like buzzing insects; and then, too, there was the more or less inevitable clatter of too hurried service.
He found a place at the table, and was just dropping a lump of sugar into his tea when a most extraordinary and upsetting thing happened.
The door opened again and admitted—of all persons in the world—Miss Rosamond Veynol.