When the tall old clock in the corner next chimed he rose and called, "Suzuki!"
The Japanese servant of spotless raiment entered with noiseless footsteps.
"Tell Aunt Judy I sha'n't want dinner to-night," said Sevier; "I'll dine at the club. You can take the night off, if you like; I'll let myself in."
"Hai-e!" Suzuki sucked in his breath and his oval eyes allowed themselves a gleam of satisfaction. As he brought his master's hat and stick Harry looked at him meditatively, wondering, as he had wondered a thousand times, what lay behind that secret-keeping, brown face with its perpetual, half-smiling gravity. He had picked him up a half-dozen years before in his travels, a shabby and abject adventurer with an English dialect that was fearfully and wonderfully made; and the youthful flotsam had speedily and without apparent tuition blossomed forth into that inestimable jewel, a perfect valet. With Aunt Judy the cook, who had been a servant of his father's, Bob the chauffeur who was her son, and Suzuki, Harry's bachelor ménage in the city stood a model of its kind, and the despair of his associates.
Harry walked slowly along the street clanging with cars, on pavements busy and sunny at first and giving place gradually to wedges of lawn and stretches of deserted foliaged flagging as he approached the suburbs. At the big gate of Midfields he lifted his eyes. Mrs. Allen was just stepping from her electric at the curb, cool and statuesque and smiling.
"A penny for your thoughts!" she said. "I really believe you were counting the flag-stones. I hope you were coming in—you've been shamefully oblivious of our pleasure this season!"
"I've been oblivious of my own," he countered, opening the gate for her. "But I'm going to make amends in future."
They walked leisurely up the drive under the acacias, chatting. She had often wondered, in the old days, whether there were not some understanding between him and Echo, and his long absence had puzzled her. But he had apparently gone nowhere else, and she welcomed his return. He was a distinctly eligible parti, and Echo had reached a point where the future was a pertinent thing. There had never been between the mother and daughter that close rapport which existed between daughter and father; Mrs. Allen had never felt that she understood Echo. She had never known for her, even as a child, the fierce and excluding yearning which she had lavished on Chisholm, and which had grown even stronger with the latter's increasing years and delinquencies. But she had Echo's interests thoroughly at heart, and Harry Sevier—particularly since his speech at the Opera House—had attained to importance in her worldly estimation.
"I haven't congratulated you," she said presently. "Your speech! It was a masterly thing."
"You were there? I'm glad I didn't know it. It would have deepened the blueness of my funk."