Wolfenden muttered some indefinite reply and threw his cigarette savagely into the road. After all he was not so sure that Mr. Blatherwick’s salvation had been cheaply won!
CHAPTER XXVIII
A MIDNIGHT VISITOR
“Wolf! Wolf!”
Wolfenden, to whom sleep before the early morning hours was a thing absolutely impossible, was lounging in his easy chair meditating on the events of the day over a final cigarette. He had come to his room at midnight in rather a dejected frame of mind; the day’s happenings had scarcely gone in his favour. Helène had looked upon him coldly—almost with suspicion. In the morning he would be able to explain everything, but in the meantime Blanche was upon the spot, and he had an uneasy feeling that the girl was his enemy. He had begun to doubt whether that drive, so natural a thing, as it really happened, was not carefully planned on her part, with a full knowledge of the fact that they would meet Mr. Sabin and his niece. It was all the more irritating because during the last few days he had been gradually growing into the belief that so far as his suit with Helène was concerned, the girl herself was not altogether indifferent to him. She had refused him definitely enough, so far as mere words went, but there were lights in her soft, dark eyes, and something indefinable, but apparent in her manner, which had forbidden him to abandon all hope. Yet it was hard to believe that she was in any way subject to the will of her guardian, Mr. Sabin. In small things she took no pains to study him; she was evidently not in the least under his dominion. On the contrary, there was in his manner towards her a certain deference, as though it were she whose will was the ruling one between them. As a matter of fact, her appearance and whole bearing seemed to indicate one accustomed to command. Her family or connections she had never spoken of to him, yet he had not the slightest doubt but that she was of gentle birth. Even if it should turn out that this was not the case, Wolfenden was democratic enough to think that it made no difference. She was good enough to be his wife. Her appearance and manners were almost typically aristocratic—whatever there might be in her present surroundings or in her past which savoured of mystery, he would at least have staked his soul upon her honesty. He realised very fully, as he sat there smoking in the early hours of the morning, that this was no passing fancy of his; she was his first love—for good or for evil she would be his last. Failure, he said to himself, was a word which he would not admit in his vocabulary. She was moving towards him already, some day she should be his! Through the mists of blue tobacco smoke which hovered around him he seemed, with a very slight and very pleasant effort of his imagination, to see some faint visions of her in that more softening mood, the vaguest recollection of which set his heart beating fast and sent the blood moving through his veins to music. How delicately handsome she was, how exquisite the lines of her girlish, yet graceful and queenly figure. With her clear, creamy skin, soft as alabaster below the red gold of her hair, the somewhat haughty poise of her small, shapely head, she brought him vivid recollections of that old aristocracy of France, as one reads of them now only in the pages of romance or history. She had the grand air—even the great Queen could not have walked to the scaffold with a more magnificent contempt of the rabble, whose victim she was. Some more personal thought came to him; he half closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair steeped in pleasant thoughts; and then it all came to a swift, abrupt end, these reveries and pleasant castle-building. He was back in the present, suddenly recalled in a most extraordinary manner, to realisation of the hour and place. Surely he could not have been mistaken! That was a low knocking at his locked door outside; there was no doubt about it. There it was again! He heard his own name, softly but unmistakably spoken in a trembling voice. He glanced at his watch, it was between two and three o’clock; then he walked quickly to the door and opened it without hesitation. It was his father who stood there fully dressed, with pale face and angrily burning eyes. In his hand he carried a revolver. Wolfenden noticed that the fingers which clasped it were shaking, as though with cold.
“Father,” Wolfenden exclaimed, “what on earth is the matter?”
He dropped his voice in obedience to that sudden gesture for silence. The Admiral answered him in a hoarse whisper.
“A great deal is the matter! I am being deceived and betrayed in my own house! Listen!”