She sat near to him, while he hastily and fumblingly searched for paper. The idea of being alone with her in the offices seemed delightful to him. And just then he heard a step in the passage, and a well-known dry cough, and the trailing of a long brush on the linoleum. Of course, the caretaker, the inevitable and omnipresent Mrs. Mawner, had invested the place, according to her nightly custom.
Mrs. Mawner opened the door of Sir George's room, and stood on the mat, calmly gazing within, the brush in one hand and a duster in the other.
'I beg pardon, sir,' said she inimically. 'I thought Sir George was gone.'
'Sir George has gone,' Henry replied.
Mrs. Mawner enveloped the pair in her sinister glance.
'Shall you be long, sir?'
'I can't say.' Henry was firm.
Giving a hitch to her sackcloth, she departed and banged the door.
Henry and Miss Foster were solitary again. And as he glanced at her, he thought deliciously: 'I am a gay spark.' Never before had such a notion visited him.
'What first gave you the idea of writing Love in Babylon, Mr. Knight?' began Miss Foster, smiling upon him with a marvellous allurement.