Kathleen sat facing him, there was a set smile on her white lips. She heard him and did not realise one word that he was uttering, perhaps she had heard it all so often before that it was not worth listening to now.
"He is here, he is here. Here under this roof, here in this very room." The man who had written her those passionate love letters, letters which she had blistered with her tears, letters which she had destroyed at last with an aching heart and feelings of reverence and solemnity. How often, his voice calling to her, had come up out of the past, "Kathleen, I love you. Kathleen, come with me, risk all, give all, dare all, but come—come with me because I love you so."
And how nearly, how nearly she had said yes. Sometimes she wondered why she had not said yes, for it was in her heart to listen and to go—yet she had not, and now he was here.
Was she glad? No, no, no! Yet was she sorry? How could she answer, how could she tell?
"Darbey, of Dover Street, you remember, my love, my tailor, though Heaven knows I don't patronise the poor fellow one half as much as he deserves. I tell you Darbey was shocked; he said to me, almost with tears in his eyes and his voice shaking with emotion, 'My lord,' he said, 'I'm sorry to tell your lordship that your present measurements shew a falling off of two and a half inches at the waist, it's a serious thing.' He begged and besought me to consult a physician, but I did not. No, no, what does it matter after all? When I look about me and see your charming home—" he had not looked about him in the slightest degree, "then I realise that I have done what I could. I have seen to it that my child is—Don't I hear voices, hey, Kathleen?"
He certainly did, from the adjoining room came Coombe's big bass voice:
"Sir Josiah Homewood is here and he has brought some friends——"
"Friends, eh! bless me, friends of Homewood, very interesting." His lordship laughed a thin, cackling, unpleasant laugh. "My dear Harold, I think I can promise you some amusement, Sir Josiah Homewood is——"
"Is my husband's father," Kathleen said, and her cheeks suddenly blazed with generous colour. "He is also my very dear friend."
"And therefore entitled to the respect and esteem of all men," said Scarsdale quietly.