‘Not a word yet to any one. Without fail, come to-morrow afternoon, at four.’
With what show of calmness she could command, she looked up at her companion.
‘The idea of his sending in this way! It’s that Mr. Crewe I’ve told you of. I met him as I was coming home, and had to speak to him rather sharply to get rid of him. Here comes his apology, foolish man!’
Living in perpetual falsehood, Nancy felt no shame at a fiction such as this. Mere truth-telling had never seemed to her a weighty matter of the law. And she was now grown expert in lies. But Tarrant’s message disturbed her gravely. Something unforeseen must have happened—something, perhaps, calamitous. She passed a miserable night.
When she ascended the stairs at Staple Inn, next afternoon, it wanted ten minutes to four. As usual at her coming, the outer door stood open, exposing the door with the knocker. She had just raised her hand, when, with a sound of voices from inside, the door opened, and Tarrant appeared in company with a stranger. Terror-stricken, she stepped back. Tarrant, after a glance, paid no attention to her.
‘All right,’ he was saying to his friend, ‘I shall see you in a day or two. Good-bye, old man.’
The stranger had observed Nancy, but withheld his eyes from her, and quickly vanished down the stairs.
‘Who was that?’ she whispered.
‘I told you four o’clock.’
‘It is four.’