"Like a lamplighter, doctor! I went the way we'll both go now, if it's all the same to you."
A fine forked staircase bore them from the lower corridor to its counterpart above. And here the leader trod gently, a finger laid across his lips.
"That's the room," he whispered, pointing to a shut door in a side passage. "I—I almost think I'll leave her to you, doctor. It's not locked—not the door."
"I thought she was your prisoner?"
"Yes—but you'll see where she's hidden herself. I did turn that key, doctor, but that's all I did. Still, I think I'd rather you let her out."
There was nothing facetious in his droll air of guilt; he seemed really rather ashamed of his impetuous measures, as if long in doubt as to their gallantry, and abashed by the unspoken criticisms of the man whom he had brought so far afield on the spur of a flustering moment. But the truth was that Dollar did not blame him in the least, as he turned the handle softly, and heard a pusillanimous step retreating down the corridor.
It was a light and lofty room, with a broad bay-window overlooking the park; and in the bay a window-seat forming a coffer, which had been broken open from within; and just clear of the splinters, her hands raised to her disheveled hair, hat awry and country clothes begrimed, a young woman risen like Aphrodite from the foam. She had been gazing out as she put herself to rights; but at the opening of the door she turned with a light disdain, and the pair of them stood rooted to the floor.
"Lady—Vera!" he could only gasp.
She made him an abrupt little bow; then her head went back to the truculent angle necessitated by a jelly-bag hat worn almost as a mask; and her eyes hung under the brim like great blue rain-drops, grim and gleaming, but with little of his blank amazement, and nothing of the shame that shook his soul.
"No wonder you would never see me!" he muttered more to himself than to her. "Not a word even when I wrote—and I wondered what I'd done! I thought of heaps of things—but I never thought of this!"