“No, sir,” he replied: “never better, thank you. I hope you yourself may never feel worse than I do at this moment.”
Something in his way of saying it, some significance of tone, or look, or emphasis, seemed to cast a sudden chill upon the air. The General turned away with a slightly wondering, puzzled expression, and shrugged his shoulders as if he were cold. There were one or two present who remembered that gesture afterwards, identifying it with some vague sensation in themselves.
That same night the Baron caused a considerable stir by announcing his intention of leaving them on the morrow. They all had something to say in the way of surprise and remonstrance except Mr. Bickerdike, and he judiciously held his tongue. Even Hugo showed a certain concern, as a man might who felt, without quite realizing what it was he felt, the giving way of some moral support on which he had been unconsciously leaning. He looked up and asked, as the detective had asked, “What about your evidence?”
“It is said to be immaterial,” answered Le Sage. “I am speaking on the authority of the Sergeant himself.”
Hugh said no more; but he eyed the Baron in a wistful, questioning way. He was in a rather moving mood, patently looking forward to Wednesday’s ordeal with considerable nervousness and apprehension, and not altogether without reason. The Inquest had been trying enough; yet that had been a mere local affair, conducted amid familiar surroundings. To stand up in public Court and repeat, perhaps be forced to amplify, the evidence he had already given was a far different and more agitating prospect. What was in his mind, who could know? There was something a little touching in the way he clung to his family, and in the slight embarrassment they showed over his unaccustomed attentions. Audrey, falling in for her share, laughed, and responded with only a bad grace; but the glow in her eyes testified to feelings not the less proud and exultant because their repression had been so long a necessity with her.
Coming upon the Baron in the hall by-and-by, as he was on his way upstairs to prepare for the morrow’s journey, she stopped and spoke to him.
“Can you manage without a valet, Baron?”
“As I have managed a hundred times before, my dear.”
“Must you really go?”
“I must, indeed.”