"Yes," said Nell, "but I can't remember his name. It has quite gone for the moment;" and she knit her brows.
The earl stared straight at the épergne.
"Was it—Sir Archie Walbrooke?" he said, in a dry, expressionless voice.
Nell laughed, as one laughs at the sudden return of a treacherous memory.
"Of course, yes! That was the name," she said brightly. "How stupid of me!"
But Lord Wolfer did not laugh. He bent still lower over the cutlet, and worried the bone a minute or two in silence; then he consulted his watch, and rose.
"I beg you will excuse me," he said. "I have an appointment—a meeting——"
He mumbled himself out of the room, and Nell sat and gazed at the door which had closed behind him.
She was too innocent, too ignorant of the world, to have even the faintest idea of the trouble which lowered over the house which she had entered; but a vague dread of something intangible took possession of her.