“I did hope to see Miss—”
“Hush! Don’t call her that, my dear. It must be Mrs Barron, or she will consider herself insulted. Ah, she’s a strange girl, Mr Stratton, but we can’t help liking her all the same, can we?”
She held out her hand to him with a pleasant smile and a nod; and Guest saw his friend’s eyes brighten, and then noted his passionate, eager look, as there was a ring and knock.
But the ladies who came up were strangers; and it was not until quite the last that Myra and her cousin arrived, the former in black, and with a calm, resigned look in her pale face, which had grown very thoughtful and dreamy during the six months which had elapsed since that morning at breakfast, when the news came of James Dale’s tragic end.
And now her eyes softened as she greeted Stratton, and she sat talking to him in a quiet, subdued way, till the gentlemen took their leave, and made their way back to Benchers’ Inn.
Hardly a word was spoken till they were in Stratton’s room, where Guest threw his hat and umbrella down impatiently, walked straight to the door on the left of the fireplace, opened it, went in, and returned with a cigar box, which he set down, and then went back to fetch out the spirit-stand and a siphon from another shelf, while, dreamy looking and thoughtful, Stratton sat back in an easy-chair watching his friend’s free and easy, quite at home, ways, but thinking the while of Myra.
“Might have troubled yourself to get the glasses,” said Guest ill-humouredly, as he fetched a couple of tall, green Venice cups from a cabinet, poured out some whisky, frothed it up from the siphon, and drank.
“That’s better,” he said, with a sigh of satisfaction. “Aren’t you going to have one?”
“Presently.”
“Presently? Bah! It’s always presently with you. I’m tired of presently. Edie would say ‘Yes,’ directly, and I could get Aunt Jerrold to coax the old man round if he wanted coaxing. But it’s always the same. Look here; if you don’t keep your cigars somewhere else, and not on a shelf over that damp bath, I won’t smoke ’em. Hardly get ’em to light. Here,” he continued, thrusting a cigar and a match-box into Stratton’s hands, “do smoke and talk, you give a fellow the blues with your dismal looks.”