“Yes, but I am afraid some of the rest will find it has only further anxieties for them.”
“I fancy,” said Witham, “you are thinking of one.”
Maud Barrington nodded. “Yes; I am sorry for him.”
“Then it would please you if I tried to straighten out things for him? It would be difficult, but I believe it could be accomplished.”
Maud Barrington’s eyes were grateful, but there was something that Witham could not fathom behind her smile.
“If you undertook it. One could almost believe you had the wonderful lamp,” she said.
Witham smiled somewhat dryly. “Then all its virtues will be tested to-night, and I had better make a commencement while I have the courage. Colonel Barrington is in?”
Maud Barrington went with him to the door, and then laid her hand a moment on his arm. “Lance,” she said, with a little tremor in her voice, “if there was a time when our distrust hurt you, it has recoiled upon our heads. You have returned it with a splendid generosity.”
Witham did not trust himself to answer, but walked straight to Barrington’s room, and finding the door open went quietly in. The head of the Silverdale settlement was sitting at a littered table in front of a shaded lamp, and the light that fell upon it showed the care in his face. It grew a trifle grimmer when he saw the younger man.
“Will you sit down?” he said. “I have been looking for a visit from you for some little time. It would have been more fitting had you made it earlier.”