"Nonsense! I mean, I'm much obliged to you. But all I wish to know is this, where is Miss Anderson? Where--is--Miss--Anderson?
"Oh, I'll tell you, sir, in a moment," answered Mrs. Austin, bustling about and getting him some water. "Take a drink, sir," and she held the glass to his lips.
He drank slowly. The room, which had been turning round and sinking into the ground, became once more stationary, whilst the clouds of darkness disappeared, and it was light again.
"There, you'll do now," said Mrs. Austin. "Miss Anderson told me that you had been ill."
"Never mind me. Where is she?" Bernard asked the question impatiently. Would the woman never answer him?
"There have been changes, sir, since you were here," said Mrs. Austin, rather nervously, standing before him, twisting her apron round her fingers, with her eyes fixed upon it. "It all came of the artist gentleman. I wish to goodness he had never set his foot inside of my door!"
"Do you mean Miss Sinclair's brother?" interrupted Bernard, taking alarm at Norman Sinclair's influencing Doris's movements. He remembered warning her against him in this very room, and telling her that if she grew to care for him she would not love her Bernard any more.
"Yes, Mr. Sinclair. I begged her not to listen to him. But she did. And he came again and again, until he had persuaded her to stop making those pictures and give up her business, which was paying her so grandly."
"Give up her business! Did you say he persuaded her to give up her business? Did she do that?"
"Yes, sir, yes. Didn't she tell you? For, now I come to think of it, she had done that before you were ill, when she went to see you at Richmond."