The girl stooped down and looked at the fallen man.
“My God!” said she, brushing tears from her eyes—“yes. They might think I had—lured the poor fool—to it!”
She stepped into the fog and followed the sound of the retreating footsteps up the street to the hurly-burly of the town.
CHAPTER XCII
Wherein it is seen that the Blood of the Oldest Families may run to Inconsequence and Mere Vulgar Stains
Lord Wyntwarde, his face purple with anger and his mouth uttering vile oaths that roused ugly echoes in the ruddy old Elizabethan alleys, strode up and down the flagged walk of the ancient cobbled courtyard before his stables; and the family lawyer walked beside him anxiously, with “Tut, tut!” and “Listen to me—one moment,” and “Be reasonable, Lord Wyntwarde!” whilst the wrathful lord, with much insistence of reiteration, roundly wished him on a far and hot journey, being free from all diffidence in naming the climate.
The coachman’s small children stood shrinking from the fury of his lordship’s wrath, clinging to each other at the door of their home, peeping coyly over timid little shoulders with large eyes of awe at the cursing tyrant who strode before them. They were dressed for travel—being tied up in large woollen mufflers that seem to be the peculiar badge of the children of cottagers when packed for a journey. Their tearful mother kept bringing down hastily-made parcels and placing them about the door. In the minds of the little ones, behind their wondering eyes, was the picture of their father, the old coachman, sitting in the midst of his dismantled home upstairs, crying like a child.
“Lord Wyntwarde,” said the lawyer, “you must pull yourself together and——”