“How else? Besides, Lord Milborough is very pressing. But as we can’t expect the poor man to stay here day after day, Tom is anxious we should be off to-morrow. They have all just been here. Didn’t you meet them?”
“They passed me in the street.”
“I forgot. Of course you have been too much occupied to see anything of them. Besides, men rarely like each other. Don’t go. Anne will be here in a moment. The comfort that it will be to get back to properly-proportioned evenings and late dinners! You really wish to go? Then I will fetch Anne.” Remembrance of Hugh made it easy for him to beg her not to do this with an earnestness which perplexed her, but she was keen to carry her point.
“You can’t refuse to see a lady, I suppose?” she said, jumping up. “I want you to tell her that she can do you no good by staying.”
“Me!”
“And herself harm. But that—”
She rustled out of the room, with an air of filling space, which belonged to her. Vexed at this special interview, Wareham walked restlessly about the room, turning over fragmentary literature. Two Germans came in, stared at him, went out again. Then, to his relief, appeared Colonel Martyn. His sympathy was unaffected, and Wareham had never liked him so well; but at this moment his merit was the merit of being a third person.
“I went to look for you a couple of hours ago,” he told Wareham, “thinking I might be of some little use, but you weren’t to be found. Sad time this, for you.”
“Thank you. It is. But Sivertsen has been most useful, and in this country the officials don’t go out of their way to be overbearing, as I have found them in Germany. I believe that everything’s arranged. Mrs Martyn talks of your leaving to-morrow?”
A gleam of unmistakable relief irradiated Colonel Martyn’s face. He hesitated over his “yes,” however, and added—