“I can only apologize for disturbing you at such an hour,” he answered, taking up his hat. “I could think of nothing else.”
She looked at him coldly.
“The girl’s parents,” she said, “are respectable people, and I am sheltering her for their sake. But I am bound to say that I consider her story most unsatisfactory.”
They were standing in the hall—she had paused on her way out to conclude her sentence. Her maid, holding out a wonderful rose-lined opera cloak, was standing a few yards away; a man-servant was waiting at the door with the handle in his hand. She raised her eyes to his, and Macheson felt the challenge which flashed out from them. She imagined, then, that he had been the girl’s companion; the cold disdain of her manner was in itself an accusation.
His cheeks burned with a sort of shame. She had dared to think this of him—and that afterwards he should have brought the girl to her to beg for shelter! There were a dozen things which he ought to have said, which came flashing from his brain to find themselves somehow imprisoned behind his tightly locked lips. He said nothing. She passed slowly, almost unwillingly, down the hall. The maid wrapped her coat around her—still he stood like a statue. He watched her pass through the opened door and enter the electric brougham. He watched it even glide away. Then he, too, went and joined Holderness, who was waiting outside.
“Hail, succourer of damsels in distress!” Holderness called out, producing his cigar-case. “Jolly glad you got rid of her! It would have meant the waiting-room at St. Pancras and an all-night sitting. Smoke, my son, and we will walk home—unless you mind this bit of rain. Was her ladyship gracious?”
“She was not,” Macheson answered grimly, “but she is keeping the girl. I’d like to walk,” he added, lighting a cigar.
“A very elegant lady,” Holderness remarked, “but I thought she looked a bit up in the air. Did you notice her pearls, Victor?”
Macheson nodded.
“Wonderful, weren’t they?”