‘Wait,’ he whispered, holding her back. ‘Hush! I have promised that she shall see no one.’
Bertha descended, unassisted, her veil down, and neither turning to the right nor the left, crossed the hall and went upstairs. Robert took off his overcoat and hat, took a light and followed her, signing that Phœbe should remain behind. She found Mervyn at the library door, like herself rather appalled at the apparition that had swept past them. She put her hand into his, with a kind of common feeling that they were awaiting a strict judge.
Robert soon reappeared, and in a preoccupied way, kissed the one and shook hands with the other, saying, ‘She has locked her door, and says she wants nothing. I will try again presently—not you, Phœbe; I could only get her home on condition she should see no one without her own consent. So you had my telegram?’
‘We met it at the station. How did you find her?’
‘Had the man been written to?’ asked Robert.
‘No,’ said Mervyn; ‘we thought it best to treat it as childish nonsense, not worth serious notice, or in fact—I was not equal to writing.’
The weary, dejected tone made Robert look up, contrary to the brothers’ usual habit of avoiding one another’s eye, and he exclaimed, ‘I did not know! You were not going to London to-night?’
‘Worse staying at home,’ murmured Mervyn, as, leaning on a corner of the mantelshelf, he rested his head on his hand.
‘I was coming with him,’ said Phœbe; ‘I thought if he gave directions, you could act.’
Robert continued to cast at him glances of dismay and compunction while pursuing the narrative. ‘Hastings must have learnt by some means that the speculation was not what he had imagined; for though he met her at Paddington—’