“If I could have just milk and water,” she said meekly.
Mr. Boldero emptied the cup into the slop basin, and began to fill it again.
“Did he tell you anything?” she asked, after a considerable silence.
“Nothing,” said Mr. Boldero in his low, soothing tones. “Nothing except that he had come from Liverpool. Judging from his shoes I should say he must have walked a good bit of the way.”
“At his age!” murmured Sophia, touched.
“Yes,” sighed Mr. Boldero. “He must have been in great straits. You know, he could scarcely talk at all. By the way, here are his clothes. I have had them put aside.”
Sophia saw a small pile of clothes on a chair. She examined the suit, which was still damp, and its woeful shabbiness pained her. The linen collar was nearly black, its stud of bone. As for the boots, she had noticed such boots on the feet of tramps. She wept now. These were the clothes of him who had once been a dandy living at the rate of fifty pounds a week.
“No luggage or anything, of course?” she muttered.
“No,” said Mr. Boldero. “In the pockets there was nothing whatever but this.”
He went to the mantelpiece and picked up a cheap, cracked letter case, which Sophia opened. In it were a visiting card—‘Senorita Clemenzia Borja’—and a bill-head of the Hotel of the Holy Spirit, Concepcion del Uruguay, on the back of which a lot of figures had been scrawled.