"I do wish I'd known. If I'd had the slightest idea I should have come over instantly." She spoke with eager seriousness, and then added, smiling as if in appeal to be favourably understood: "I thought it was only about my affairs--sale or what not. And as I'd asked you to manage all these things exactly as you thought best, I didn't trouble--"
He laughed, and either forgave or forgot.
"Will you come this way?" he invited, in a new tone of friendliness. "We're rather in a mess here."
"You're all alone, too," she said, following him into his room.
"Sowter's out," he answered laconically, waiting for her to precede him. He said nothing as to the office-boy, nor as to Mr. Karkeek. Hilda was now sure that something strange had happened.
"So you've heard from Sarah, have you?" he began, when they were both seated in his own room. There were still a lot of papers, though fewer than of old, on the broad desk; but the bookcase was quite empty, and several of the shelves in it had supped from the horizontal; the front part of the shelves was a pale yellow, and behind that, an irregular dark band of dust indicated the varying depths of the vanished tomes. The forlornness of the bookcase gave a stricken air to the whole room.
"She's not well."
"Or she imagines she's not well."
"Oh no!" said Hilda warmly. "It isn't imagination. She really isn't well."
"You think so?"