"If you would come into Mr. Elphinstone's study, sir?" suggested Elspeth respectfully, as he hesitated. Since she now evinced no desire to embrace him, he was about to accede to her request when there was a knock at the front door, which opened to admit the grinning and curious face of the hackney coachman, demanding to know if he was to wait any longer.
So it was not Anne only who was overjoyed when Mr. Elphinstone walked suddenly in.
Late that evening—much later than he ought to have been up—Anne-Hilarion still sat contentedly though sleepily enfolded in his grandfather's arms. He had ceased to ask questions, for they had all been satisfactorily answered . . . all except that "Did you miss me, Grandpapa?" to which Grandpapa had seemed incapable of replying. So his last remark was a statement.
"I had to leave my goldfish behind with those ladies." For he had satisfied himself that Elspeth had not brought it back with her after all.
"Don't speak of those women!" said the gentle old man fiercely. "As for your goldfish, child, you shall have a whole aquarium if you wish."
"Then I could put my big shell inside," murmured Anne drowsily. "M. le Chevalier said it came from . . . came from. . . ." He ceased suddenly; he was asleep.
Conscience-stricken at last, Mr. Elphinstone rang the bell for Elspeth, and was left by the fire to reflect on the inexhaustible mercy of Heaven, and on the debt that he owed to a man away in Jersey, whom he scarcely knew, whom he could not even thank—a debt that in any case, so far as he could see, must ever go unpaid, for it was unpayable.