He remained an hour. When he left the house, he walked rapidly out of the Park, casting but one hasty glance to the right, crossed the city and went straight to the house of Molly Shropshire’s sister. It also was unchanged, a square ugly brown house on a corner over-looking the blue bay and the wild bright hills beyond. The houses that had sprung up about it were cheap and fresh, and bulging with bow-windows.
“Yes,” the maid told him, “Miss Shropshire still lived there, and was at home.” The room into which she showed him was dark, and had the musty smell of the unpopular front parlour. A white marble slab on the centre table gleamed with funereal significance. Thorpe drew up the blinds, and let in the sun. He was unable to decide if the room had been refurnished since the one occasion upon which he had entered it before; but it had an old-fashioned and dingy appearance.
He heard a woman’s gown rustle down the stair, and his nerves shook. When Miss Shropshire entered, she did not detect his effort at composure. She had accepted the flesh of time, and her hair was beginning to turn; but she shook hands in her old hearty decided fashion.
“I heard yesterday that you were here,” she said. “Take that armchair. I rather hoped you’d come. We used to quarrel; but, after all, you are an Englishman, and I can never forget that I was born over there, although I don’t remember so much as the climate.”
“Will you tell me the whole story? I did not intend to come to see you, to mention her name. But it has come back, and I must know all that there is to know—from the very date of my leaving up to now. Of course, she wrote me that you were in her confidence.”
She told the story of a year which had been as big with import for one woman as for a nation. “Mr. Randolph died six months after the wedding,” she concluded, wondering if some men were made of stone. “It killed him. He did not see her again until he was on his death-bed. Then he forgave her. Any one would, poor thing. He left his money in trust, so that she has a large income, and is in no danger of losing it. She lives with her mother at Redwoods. Clough died some years ago—of drink. It was in his blood, I suppose, for almost from the day he set foot in Redwoods he was a sot.”
“And Nina?”
“Don’t try to see her,” said Miss Shropshire, bluntly. “You would only be horrified,—you wouldn’t recognise her if you met her on the street. She is breaking, fortunately. I saw her the other day, for the first time in two years, and she told me she was very ill.”
“Have you deserted her?”