Wilton darted back, letting fall the blind.
“Slip on your dressing gown,” he said, hastily, “and pull out those confounded things from your hair. They’ve come back.”
“Oh, my dear, and me this figure!” cried the lady, and for the next ten minutes there was a hurried sound of dressing going on.
“Look sharp,” said Wilton. “I’ll go down and let them in. You’d better rouse up Cook and Samuel; they’ll want something to eat.”
“I won’t be two minutes, my dear. Take them in the library; the wood ashes will soon glow up again. My own darlings! I am glad.”
Mrs Wilton was less, for by the time the heavy bolts, lock, and bar had been undone, she was out of her room, and hurried to the balustrade to look down into the hall, paying no heed to the cool puff of wind that rushed upward and nearly extinguished the candle her husband had set down upon the marble table.
“My own boy!” she sighed, as she saw Claud enter, and heard his words.
“Thankye,” he said. “Gone to bed soon.”
“The usual time, my boy,” said Wilton, in very different tones to those he had used at their last meeting. “But haven’t you brought her?”
“Brought her?”