“My God! poor Charlie—my God! poor Charlie”—over and over again.
Suddenly he got stiffly to his feet.
“Hush! Didn’t I hear the boy crying?” he said, listening in a startled way. “He’s left to me yet—he sha’n’t be disinherited—his mother must come back to me and end all this. There was never a woman so beautiful or so foolish in all the world.”
He seemed to recollect himself, and me, and my question; and now he answered that obliquely, not looking at me, but fingering some papers on his desk.
“You know your course, Gaskett? It’s obvious enough, I should think.”
The formal address, the reluctance of his manner, woke a strange chill in me.
“I think so, sir,” I said, withdrawing a little. “It is to visit Lady Skene’s mother again, and face her with a new and sufficient reason for confessing the truth.”
He drew in his breath softly, as if to a wince of pain; then turned to canvass me fully for the first time.
“Well,” he said, “you have hit me pretty hard in my old age, Gaskett; and you’ll not be surprised that I find your hand a bit stunning. You must grant me to-night to think it all over; and to-morrow I’ll give you my answer. Come up at midday. The man’s safe with you, I suppose. That’s all that it’s essential to ensure for the moment. I shall not come in to dinner. Good-night!”
The blows to which he had been subjected had tried him, no doubt, to the very limit of endurance; yet, somehow, this was not the sequel to them that I had expected. My heart was like a stone in me. I turned and went out of the room without another word.