“He ain’t drunk,” replied the man shortly. “He’s gone mad, my girl. Look at his eyes.”
And as the girl looked fearfully through the window at her unhappy master, she could not doubt the truth of the man’s words.
At eleven o’clock on the previous night George Claris had been as sane a man as any in the county. At six o’clock in the morning he was a raving madman.
CHAPTER XIX.
It was about a month after the shipwreck which brought such strange consequences to the Blue Lion and its inmates that Clifford King, much against his will, found himself, for the first time that winter, at a dance. He detested dancing, never accepted an invitation to a ball if he could help it, and never turned up if he found himself compelled to accept.
But this entertainment was an exceptional one, being given in honor of the “coming out” of Otto Conybeare’s youngest sister, and the mines laid for him had proved successful.
When he got to the house, however, he found the sight such a pretty one that he could not tell even himself that he was a martyr in having to come. The rooms were large and beautifully decorated with ferns and daffodils, “just like a church on Easter Sunday,” as Otto said.
Clifford’s attention was attracted early in the evening by the sight of a girl whose face he knew, who looked at him again and again, as if she expected him to recognize her, but whose name he could not remember. In fact, the more often he met her eyes, the more sure he felt he did not even know it.
Before long Clifford saw her speak to Otto and glance in the direction of himself.
“Now,” thought he, “I shall get to the bottom of the mystery.” For he had had no opportunity of getting hold of Otto, or of any one who could tell him who she was. Otto came straight toward him.