"A week ago I—I'd have backed myself to make it somehow. But—well, one soon learns how devilish hard it is to get what one wants. What a conceited young idiot you must have thought me when we used to talk down at Milldean!"
"You were always an excellent companion. Let's ring for Thompson and execute the deed."
Jeremy could not refuse, and could not yet consent. Grantley stood smoking airily and looking at him with a whimsical smile. Then the door opened and the butler came in, unsummoned.
"Ah, the fates decide!" exclaimed Grantley with a laugh. "Where's a pen, Jeremy?"
"For you, sir," said Thompson, holding out a salver with a letter on it.
"Oh!" Grantley laid down his pen, took the letter, and sat down at the writing-table. "Wait a minute; I want you to witness something for me," he said to the butler.
Thompson stood in serene immobility. His thoughts were far away, engrossed in a discussion he had been having with the groom as to the "form" of that same horse of Caylesham's about which Mrs. Bolton had wanted to know. Jeremy sat making up his mind to endure being helped, and poignantly remorseful about the view he had taken of Grantley. The view was earnestly disclaimed now; the help seemed very fine and wonderful. He did so want hope, scope, a chance, a start, and that all his talk of what he would do should not come to naught. In turn Dora, Eva, and Anna passed through his mind, each bringing her own influence to bear, giving him a new picture of the future. And why refuse? If ever a gift had been freely, grandly offered, this was. Would it not be even churlish to refuse? Reasons or no reasons, his heart and his hand went out instinctively; he could not refuse the beginning of all things.
Giving his head a restless little jerk as at last he accepted this decision, he chanced to turn his eyes on Grantley's face. Their attention was caught and arrested by it. There was something strange there. The cheeks were rather pale, the jaw set rigidly. Grantley read his letter with a curious engrossment—not hurriedly nor off-hand, as a man generally reads when other business is at a standstill till he reaches the end. He turned back, it seemed, once or twice, to look at another sentence again. Jeremy could not stop staring at him. Even Thompson awoke to the fact that he was being kept waiting a long while, and that the groom would probably finish the beer and go away, leaving their important discussion unfinished and the proper odds unascertained.
Grantley had recognised Christine Fanshaw's large irregular handwriting, and had expected nothing more serious than an invitation to dinner. But he was not reading an invitation to dinner now.
"I have just heard from Sibylla—from Milldean. She encloses a letter for you, which she says I am to send on to you to-morrow. She insists that I am not to send it before; and if I won't do as she asks, I am to burn it. You are not to have it to-day. I cannot disobey her in this; but she says nothing about my telling you she has sent a letter; the only thing is that I must not deliver it to you till to-morrow. I had no idea you had let her go down to Milldean alone. How could you let her do this? There is one other thing I must say to you. Walter Blake was to have dined here to-night. This morning he wired excuses, saying he was going for a cruise in his yacht. You must consider what that means. I beg you not to wait for the letter, but to go to Milldean this afternoon. Say nothing of having heard from me. Just go as if it was by accident; say you got your work done sooner than you expected, or anything you like; but go. I believe you'll be sorry all your life if you don't go. Let nothing stop you, for your own sake, and still more for hers.—C.F."