Miss Alicia, sitting waiting on Fate in the library, wore precisely the aspect he had known she would wear. She had been lying awake at night and she had of course wept at intervals, since she belonged to the period the popular female view of which had been that only the unfeeling did not so relieve themselves in crises of the affections. Her eyelids were rather pink and her nice little face was tired.
“It is very, very kind of you to come,” she said, when they shook hands. “I wonder “—her hesitance was touching in its obvious appeal to him not to take the wrong side,—“I wonder if you know how deeply troubled I have been?”
“You see, I have had a touch of my abominable gout, and my treasure of a Braddle has been nursing me and gossiping,” he answered. “So, of course I know a great deal. None of it true, I dare say. I felt I must come and see you, however.”
He looked so neat and entirely within the boundaries of finished and well-dressed modernity and every-day occurrence, in his perfectly fitting clothes, beautifully shining boots, and delicate fawn gaiters, that she felt a sort of support in his mere aspect. The mind connected such almost dapper freshness and excellent taste only with unexaggerated incidents and a behavior which almost placed the stamp of absurdity upon the improbable in circumstance. The vision of disorderly and illegal possibilities seemed actually to fade into an unreality.
“If Mr. Palford and Mr. Grimby knew him as I know him—as—as you know him—” she added with a faint hopefulness.
“Yes, if they knew him as we know him that would make a different matter of it,” admitted the duke, amiably. But, thought Miss Alicia, he might only have put it that way through consideration for her feelings, and because he was an extremely polished man who could not easily reveal to a lady a disagreeable truth. He did not speak with the note of natural indignation which she thought she must have detected if he had felt as she felt herself. He was of course a man whose manner had always the finish of composure. He did not seem disturbed or even very curious—only kind and most polite.
“If we only knew where he was!” she began again. “If we only knew where Mr. Strangeways was!”
“My impression is that Messrs. Palford & Grimby will probably find them both before long,” he consoled her. “They are no doubt exciting themselves unnecessarily.”
He was not agitated at all; she felt it would have been kinder if he had been a little agitated. He was really not the kind of person whose feelings appeared very deep, being given to a light and graceful cynicism of speech which delighted people; so perhaps it was not natural that he should express any particular emotion even in a case affecting a friend—surely he had been Temple's friend. But if he had seemed a little distressed, or doubtful or annoyed, she would have felt that she understood better his attitude. As it was, he might almost have been on the other side—a believer or a disbeliever—or merely a person looking on to see what would happen. When they sat down, his glance seemed to include her with an interest which was sympathetic but rather as if she were a child whom he would like to pacify. This seemed especially so when she felt she must make clear to him the nature of the crisis which was pending, as he had felt when he entered the house.
“You perhaps do not know”—the appeal which had shown itself in her eyes was in her voice—“that the solicitors have decided, after a great deal of serious discussion and private inquiry in London, that the time has come when they must take open steps.”