A strange apparition in Curzon Street, at four o'clock on a January afternoon! If you search the files of the papers at this period, you will find no notice of any remarkable atmospheric phenomena in Curzon Street that afternoon. But two angels were there, nevertheless, and Lord Ascot had a dim suspicion of it.
A dim suspicion of it! How could it be otherwise, when he heard a voice in one ear repeating Lady Ascot's last words, "What can save you from the terrible hereafter?" and in the other the stealthy whisper of the fiend, "Half a million! half a million!"
He paused, only for a moment, and then headed northward again. The black angel was at his ear, but the white one was close to him—so close, that when his own door opened, the three passed in together. Adelaide, standing under the chandelier in the hall, saw nothing of the two spirits; only her husband, scowling fiercely.
She was going upstairs to dress, but she paused. As soon as Lord Ascot's "confidential scoundrel," before mentioned, had left the hall, she came up to him, and in a whisper, for she knew the man was listening, said:
"What is the matter, Welter?"
He looked as if he would have pushed her out of the way. But he did not. He said:
"I have seen Charles Ravenshoe."
"When?"
"To-night."