"But we mustn't," she urged. "For years he tried to make her wretched. There were rumors of other women. She's found peace at last. It wouldn't help him to let her know that he had died loving her out there. He's beyond any help of ours. They all are." He surmised who the they were: the three soldiermen who had sat there before him. In pleading for silence for others, she was pleading for silence for herself. Again she was defending herself against his thoughts. "All of the dead had their chance. Lord Dawn had; there were so many years in which he might have told her. To tell her now would be to rob——"
She broke off as the maid reëntered with the coffee. Her tone changed instantly to one of convention. "Not here, Porter. We'll have it in the drawing-room."
As he followed her out across the hall, he glanced at his watch. It was past eight o'clock. He could lose no more time. He must plunge boldly into the subject of his mission and bring his visit promptly to an end. He dreaded the temptation of that feminine room, with its coziness and security and quiet. It made him too much alone with her; she was not a woman that it was wise to be alone with too long.
The moment the maid had left them and the door had closed, he became confirmed in the sanity of this decision. Everything in the room appealed to him
to procrastinate. The curtains before the French windows were closely drawn. The hearth had been swept in their absence; the fire glowed more companionably than ever. About the table, where the coffee waited, a solitary lamp shed a golden blur. It was heavily shaded with yellow silk, so that most of its light escaped their faces and fell downwards.
She had seated herself on the couch. When she had filled both cups, she glanced up at him smilingly, patting the vacant place beside her as a sign that he should occupy it. He was standing before the fire, looking immensely tall in the semi-darkness. He could see her plainly where she sat beneath the lamp; but of him she could see nothing but his outline, for his eyes were lost in shadow. When he seemed not to have noticed her sign, "Come," she said coaxingly. "You don't spare yourself at all. You make yourself tired by so much standing."
"Mrs. Lockwood——" She started as he called her that. Twice already she had been Maisie to him. "Mrs. Lockwood, as you reminded me before dinner, it was about you that I came here to talk. Let's get it over. I haven't any idea how far things have gone. I should like to believe that nine-tenths of what's said is nothing more than gossip. But why can't you let him alone? He may mean nothing or a tremendous lot to you—but why can't you?"