Perhaps, after all, she had been on the wrong track. Certainly she had been on the wrong track. This man owed her something, the perplexing Pottow had said, meaning evidently a debt of gratitude.
Then it couldn't be one of those. They were the last persons to think themselves in arrears of that kind. It must be some one she had befriended. She supposed she had befriended poor men on occasions, but she couldn't recall individual cases.
Possibly it was a coachman or gardener, or one of the tenantry at some place she had been years agone.
Or—why, to be sure!—some private from the ranks, who had completed his service, fallen heir to a little farm and a little quarry here in Somersetshire, and settled down to the prosaic life of a plodding civilian.
The idea robbed the prospect of the meeting of most of its interest. And it was the only idea she could accept. She even forgot to tell Delphine that she was expecting a caller, and she forgot, too, to have the lights arranged as she had planned.
When, therefore, her maid came to her with the announcement that a gentleman was calling—a gentleman who wouldn't give his name, but said that he came at Dr. Pottow's suggestion—she was not in the least prepared.
"Does he seem a gentleman, Delphine?" she asked, interested afresh.
"Oh, oui, madame! A young gentleman, and good-looking."
"Have you ever seen him before?"
"Of a certainty, madame. Here, with Dr. Pottow."