"Certainly not, Mrs. Clinton," replied Miss Wilson indignantly. "If those are the only conditions on which I may accept your offer, then I must refuse it altogether."
"I haven't made you an offer yet," said Mrs. Clinton, "and of course, under the circumstances, I cannot do so. So I will wish you good-morning."
Miss Wilson seemed about to say something more, but changed her mind and left the room with her head in the air.
The two ladies looked at one another. "What on earth can it have been?" asked Mrs. Clinton.
"Carrying on," replied Lady Birkett, with a laugh. "I can see it now. She's the sort that carries on. The details we must leave to the imagination, but we're well rid of her."
CHAPTER XIX
MRS. CLINTON IN JERMYN STREET
It was about seven o'clock in the evening. Mrs. Clinton stood for a moment on the pavement, on which the light of a street lamp shone and was reflected from the wet stone, and paid her cabman. Then she turned to the tall dull house and rang the bell. In this house, in one of the narrow streets just off St. James's, Dick had had rooms for many years, but his mother had not been able to correct the cabman when he had first stopped at a wrong number. She had time to reflect on this fact before the door was opened to her. Captain Clinton was not in, said the man, but he generally came in to dress not later than half-past seven; and she said she would go to his room and wait.
The hall was narrow and dimly lighted. On a table under a tiny gas-jet were a dozen or so of bedroom candlesticks, and hanging on the wall a rack for letters and telegrams. The stairs were darkly druggeted. The man opened a door on the first floor, turned on the light and retired, and she found herself in a furnished apartment such as is occupied by men of fashion in London. There was nothing to mark it off from superior furnished apartments anywhere. The furniture was of the solid Victorian type, the paper on the walls ugly, the carpet of a nondescript colour. There was a gilt clock on the mantelpiece and two coloured glass vases. The pictures had no value or beauty. On a marble-topped sideboard were a collection of gloves, caps, and hats, the silk ones beautifully ironed and brushed, and on the sofa were two or three carefully folded overcoats. These were all that spoke of Dick's occupancy of the rooms, on which otherwise he had made no sort of personal impress in a tenancy ranging over twelve years. There were no books, and not even a photograph belonging to him. Yet he paid the rent of a good house for this room and a bedroom behind the grained and varnished folding-doors, and was quite content with them. There was no bathroom in the house, and he had to go out for all his meals except breakfast; but he was valeted as well as if he had been at home.