'Willingly,' said Hugo, who could find nothing else to say. 'I suppose we must call the servants?'
'Why call the servants? To begin with, there is only one here, a somewhat antique housekeeper. Let her sleep. She has been through sufficient to-day. Morning will be time enough for the futile formalities which civilization has invented to protect itself. Night, which is the season of death, should not be disturbed by them.'
'As you think best,' Hugo concurred.
'And now,' Darcy began, in a somewhat relieved tone, when he had finished his task, and the remains of Francis Tudor lay decently covered on a sofa in the drawing-room, that mortuary chamber, 'will you oblige me by coming into the study for a while? I am not in the mood for sleep, and perhaps you are not. And I will admit frankly that I should prefer not to be alone at present. Yes,' he added, with a faint deprecatory smile, 'my theories about death are thoroughly philosophical, but one cannot always act up to one's theories.'
And in the study, at the other end of the flat, far from the relics of humanity, he began to roll cigarettes with marvellous swiftness in his long thin fingers.
Hugo surmised that under his singular and almost glacial calm the man concealed a temperament highly nervous and sensitive.
'You do not inquire about the—the coffin?' said Darcy at length, when they had smoked for a few moments in silence.
As a fact, Hugo had determined that, at no matter what cost to his feelings, he would not be the first to mention the other fatality.
The two men looked at each other, and each blew out a lance of smoke.
'What did she die of?' Hugo demanded curtly.