Varbarriere smiled and shook his head.
"No angler, sir, never was," he said.
"A bad day, rather, at all events," said Drayton; "a grey day is the thing for us."
"Ah, yes, a grey day; so my nephew tells me; a pretty good angler, I believe."
Varbarriere did not hear Drayton's answer, whatever it was; he was thinking of quite other things, and more and more feverishly every minute. The situation was for him all in darkness. But there remained on his mind the impression that something worse even than a guilty discovery had occurred last night, and the spectre that had just crossed them in the hall was not a sight to dissipate those awful shadows.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Lady Alice Redcliffe makes General Lennox's Acquaintance.
Old General Lennox stopped a servant on the stairs, and learned from the staring domestic where Lady Alice Redcliffe then was.
That sad and somewhat virulent old martyr was at that moment in her accustomed haunt, Lady Mary's boudoir, and in her wonted attitude over the fire, pondering in drowsy discontent over her many miseries, when a sharp knock at the door startled her nerves and awakened her temper.