"Voices always go by contraries," he thought. "She's fifty-two and wears glasses."
Aloud he said: "But please tell me quite frankly—am I intruding?"
"Not at all," said the lady, only that and nothing more.
"Perhaps then you won't object if I find a seat? Leaning against a door is so dull, don't you think?"
He groped forward, hands outstretched before him, stumbled against the stairway which he sought, and sat down uncomfortably on the next-to-the-bottom step. Then suddenly the oddness of his situation rushed over him, and, vexed though he was with the chain of needless circumstances which had brought him into it, he with difficulty repressed a laugh.
An hour ago he had been lounging at peace upon the yacht, looking forward to nothing more titillating than bed at the earliest respectable hour. Now he was sitting with a strange lady of uncertain age in an unlighted cottage on a lonely country road, while a howling thunderstorm raved outside imprisoning him for nobody could say how long. In the interval between these two extremes, he had discovered that he was a "double," been threatened with violence, hopelessly lost Peter, and found Mary Carstairs. Surely and in truth, a pretty active hour's work!
On the tin roof of the cottage the rain beat a wild tattoo. Within, the silence lengthened. Under the circumstances, Varney considered reserve on the lady's part not unnatural; but a little talk, as he viewed the matter, would tend to help the dreary evening through.
He cleared his throat for due notice and began with a laugh.
"I was industriously chasing two men from town when the storm caught me. You know what I mean—not drumming them out of the city, but merely pursuing them in this general direction. I wonder if by any chance you happened to pass them on the road?"
"N-no, I believe not."