“Yes, aunt; all right. Go to bed. Why are you up?”
There was no reply, and he turned the hall light nearly out again, and went into his consulting-room to serve the gas jet there the same, and sank into an easy-chair instead; but he had hardly allowed himself to sink back when he sprang up again, for there, in the open doorway, stood the grotesque figure of Aunt Grace, in broad-frilled, old-fashioned night-cap and dressing-gown, a flat candlestick in her hand, and a portentous frown upon her brow, as she walked straight to him, wincing sharply as one slippered foot was planted in the pool left by the cabman, but continuing her slow, important march till she was about a yard away from her nephew, when she stopped.
“Why, aunt,” he cried, “what’s the matter? Surely you are not walking in your sleep!”
“Matter?” she cried in a low, deep voice, full of the emotion which nearly choked her. “Oh, you vile, wicked, degraded boy! How dare you treat your poor sister and me like this?”
“Pooh! Hush! Nonsense, old lady. It’s all right. I’ve been dining with a friend.”
“With a friend!” she said, with cutting sarcasm.
“Yes, at his club. There, I must have been unwell. I was a little overdone. What a terrible night.”
“Terrible indeed, sir, when my nephew stoops to lie to me like that. A friend—at his club! Do you think me such a baby that I do not know you have been with that abandoned woman?”
“Hush! Silence!” he whispered angrily. “For your dear, dead father’s and mother’s sake, sir, I will not be silenced.”
“But you will arouse Laura.”