CHAPTER XLIII. A LONG DEBT
The life unlived, the deed undone, the tear
Unshed.
“I rather expect—Lady Cantourne,” said Sir John to his servants when he returned home, “any time between now and ten o'clock.”
The butler, having a vivid recollection of an occasion when Lady Cantourne was shown into a drawing-room where there were no flowers, made his preparations accordingly. The flowers were set out with that masculine ignorance of such matters which brings a smile—not wholly of mirth—to a woman's face. The little-used drawing-room was brought under the notice of the housekeeper for that woman's touch which makes a drawing-room what it is. It was always ready—this room, though Sir John never sat in it. But for Lady Cantourne it was always more than ready.
Sir John went to the library and sat rather wearily down in the stiff-backed chair before the fire. He began by taking up the evening newspaper, but failed to find his eyeglasses, which had twisted up in some aggravating manner with his necktie. So he laid aside the journal and gave way to the weakness of looking into the fire.
Once or twice his head dropped forward rather suddenly, so that his clean-shaven chin touched his tie-pin, and this without a feeling of sleepiness warranting the relaxation of the spinal column. He sat up suddenly on each occasion and threw back his shoulders.
“Almost seems,” he muttered once, “as if I were getting to be an old man.”
After that he remembered nothing until the butler, coming in with the lamp, said that Lady Cantourne was in the drawing-room. The man busied himself with the curtains, carefully avoiding a glance in his master's direction. No one had ever found Sir John asleep in a chair during the hours that other people watch, and this faithful old servant was not going to begin to do so now.
“Ah,” said Sir John, surreptitiously composing his collar and voluminous necktie, “thank you.”