Chapter Twenty Nine.
Colonel Grey led Mrs Lawless into a room on the right of the hall and rang the bell. He ordered wine, which he insisted on his companion drinking. He also requested that two bedrooms should be in readiness and a meal prepared. The ordinary affairs of life could not be neglected even if the issues at stake were distressingly serious. The Colonel was feeling more settled in mind since he was in possession of the facts. There was no immediate cause for alarm, he decided; and sought to hearten Mrs Lawless with his sanguine views. But though she appeared to listen she was too obviously nervous to attend to what he said. She sipped her wine, sitting by the fluttering curtains near the open window, looking out at the sunshine.
“Perhaps I ought not to have come,” she said once, and appeared while looking at nothing in particular to be watching the road with grave intentness. “I don’t think he’ll consent to see me.”
She was remembering how recently he had said to her that if she sent for him again he would not come. She had not sent, but her presence there amounted to the same thing.
And then after a while the door opened and he came in. The Colonel uttered a sudden exclamation.
“My dear fellow!” he cried in astonishment, his manner charged with grave solicitude. “My dear fellow! Is this wise?”
Mrs Lawless sprang up from her chair, but he put out a hand and motioned her back, and with her startled eyes on his leaden face, she sank down again without speaking. Lawless took a seat.
“I don’t know how you came to hear of this,” he said. “I didn’t intend it should get about. They’re making more of it than they need. In a few days I should have been back in Cape Town.”
He looked inquiringly at the Colonel.