While in the act of going downstairs she heard the sound of Claude Westwood's voice in the hall. He was talking to Clare in front of the blazing logs of the hall fire, and Agnes saw that he now wore the dress of a country gentleman. When he had called at the house the previous day as well as on the day after his return to England, he had worn a black morning coat. She paused beneath the stained-glass window of the little lobby where the broad staircases turned off at right angles to the half-dozen shallow steps at the bottom—she paused, and could not move for some moments, for the scene which was before her eyes appeared to her like a glimpse of a day she remembered well: the same man wearing the same jacket and gaiters, had stood talking in the same voice to a young girl who looked up to his face as she stooped somewhat over the big grate, holding her fingers over the blaze, just as Clare was doing.
She stood motionless on the landing. The crimson roses of the stained-glass of the window made her a splendid head-dress, and in the panels on each side spread branches of rosemary—rosemary for remembrance.
Alas! she remembered but too well the words which had been spoken between the two people who had stood there long ago. “It is for you—it is all for you,” he had said. “I mean to make a name that shall be in some measure worthy of you.” Those were his words, and then she had looked up to his face and had put her hand, warm from the fire, into his hand. She had trusted him; and now—
“Is it a ghost?” cried Clare, laughing. “Are you a ghost, beautiful lady, or do you see a ghost?”
She had gone along the hall to the foot of the half-dozen shallow oak steps beneath the window.
“A ghost—a ghost,” said Agnes, descending. “Yes, I have seen a ghost.”
Claude advanced to the middle of the hall to meet her. She greeted him silently.
“I saw your ponies in the distance and hurried after you, hoping that you would ask me to lunch,” said he.
“A woman's lunch!” she cried. “You cannot surely know what our menu is.”
“I will take it on trust,” said he. “You represent company here. When I come to you I forget the loneliness of the Court.”