"Oh, indeed! Sir Penthony, I beg your pardon. Of course, Sir Penthony, if you wish to wait——"
Here Sir Penthony, who has slowly been mounting the stairs all this time, with Chawles, much exercised in his mind, at his heels—(for Cecil's commands are not to be disputed, and the situation is a good one, and she has distinctly declared no one is to be received)—Sir Penthony pauses on the landing and lays his hand on the boudoir door.
"Not there, Sir Penthony," says the man, interposing hurriedly, and throwing open the drawing-room door, which is next to it. "If you will wait here I don't think my lady will be long, as she said she should be 'ome at one to keep an appointment."
"That will do." Sternly. "Go!—I dare say," thinks Stafford, angrily, as the drawing-room door is closed on him, "if I make a point of it, she will dismiss that fellow. Insolent and noisy as a parrot. A well-bred footman never gets beyond 'Yes' or 'No' unless required, and even then only under heavy pressure. But what appointment can she have? And who is secreted in her room? Pshaw! Her dressmaker, no doubt."
But, for all that, he can't quite reconcile himself to the dressmaker theory, and, but that honor forbids, would have marched straight, without any warning, into "my lady's chamber."
Getting inside the heavy hanging curtains, he employs his time watching through the window the people passing to and fro, all intent upon the great business of life,—the making and spending of money.
After a little while a carriage stops beneath him, and he sees Cecil alight from it and go with eager haste up the steps. He hears her enter, run up the stairs, pause upon the landing, and then, going into the boudoir, close the door carefully behind her.
He stifles an angry exclamation, and resolves, with all the airs of a Spartan, to be calm. Nevertheless, he is not calm, and quite doubles the amount of minutes that really elapse before the drawing-room door is thrown open and Cecil, followed by Luttrell, comes in.
"Luttrell, of all men!" thinks Sir Penthony, as though he would have said, "Et tu, Brute?" forgetting to come forward,—forgetting everything,—so entirely has a wild, unreasoning jealousy mastered him. The curtains effectually conceal him, so his close proximity remains a secret.
Luttrell is evidently in high spirits. His blue eyes are bright, his whole air triumphant. Altogether, he is as unlike the moony young man who left the Victoria Station last evening as one can well imagine.