He was to lunch with them at the Red House, but insisted on going home first to straighten up and make himself presentable. So they led him to the Avenue, and set his face straight down it, and bade him follow his nose and turn neither to the right hand nor to the left, and then they turned off through the fields by their own short-cut, and went merrily home.
PART THE SIXTH
I
Graeme was just finishing a beautiful knot in his tie, when he heard hasty feet crossing the verandah to the open front door. There was some unknown quantity in them that gave him sudden start.
"Graeme!" sharp, hoarse,—a voice he did not recognise.
He ran hastily out of the east bedroom, which he was using as a dressing-room.
"Hello there!" as he sprang down the stairs, "Why—Pixley? What's wrong, man?"
For Charles Pixley was standing there, leaning in at the doorway, looking as though he would fall headlong but for the supporting jamb. He had a brown envelope in his hand and a crumpled pink telegram. His face was white, and drawn, and haggard. His very figure seemed to have shrunk in these few minutes. Never had Graeme seen so ghastly a change in a man in so short a time.
Before Pixley could speak Miss Penny came hurrying along the path with a face full of sympathetic anxiety.