"You'll be fairly fit by evening," he said. "But don't stir until then. I'll leave word below that you're not to be disturbed."
So it happened that when Richard Hartley came dashing up an hour or two later he was not allowed to see his friend, and Ste. Marie slept a dreamless sleep until dark.
He awoke then, refreshed but ravenous with hunger, and found that there was only a dull ache in his battered head. The dizziness and the vertigo were almost completely gone. He made lights and dressed with care. He felt like a little girl making ready for a party; it was so long—or seemed so long—since he had put on evening clothes. Then he went out, leaving at the loge of the concierge a note for Hartley to say where he might be found. He went to Lavenue's and dined in solitary pomp, for it was after nine o'clock. Again it seemed to him that it was months since he had done the like—sat down to a real table for a real dinner. At ten he got into a fiacre and drove to the Rue de l'Université.
The man who admitted him said that mademoiselle was alone in the drawing-room, and he went there at once. He was dully conscious that something was very wrong, but he had suffered too much within the past few hours to be analytical, and he did not know what it was that was wrong. He should have entered that room with a swift and eager step, with shining eyes, with a high-beating heart. He went into it slowly, wrapped in a mantle of strange apathy.
Helen Benham came forward to meet him and took both his hands in hers. Ste. Marie was amazed to see that she seemed not to have altered at all—in spite of this enormous lapse of time, in spite of all that had happened in it. And yet, unaltered, she seemed to him a stranger, a charming and gracious stranger with an icily beautiful face, He wondered at her and at himself, and he was a little alarmed, because he thought that he must be ill. That blow upon the head must, after all, have done something terrible to him.
"Ah, Ste. Marie!" she said in her well-remembered voice—and again he wondered that the voice should be so high-pitched, and so without colour or feeling. "How glad I am," she said, "that you are safely out of it all! How you have suffered for us, Ste. Marie! You look white and ill. Sit down, please! Don't stand!" She drew him to a comfortable chair, and he sat down in it obediently. He could not think of anything to say, though he was not, as a rule, tongue-tied, but the girl did not seem to expect any answer, for she went on at once with a rather odd air of haste—
"Arthur is here with us, safe and sound. Richard Hartley brought him back from that dreadful place, and he has talked everything over with my grandfather, and it's all right. They both understand now, and there'll be no more trouble. We have had to be careful, very careful, and we have had to—well, to rearrange the facts a little so as to leave—my uncle—to leave Captain Stewart's name out of it. It would not do to shock my grandfather by telling him the truth. Perhaps, later; I don't know. That will have to be thought of. For the present we have left my uncle out of it—and put the blame entirely upon this other man. I forget his name."
"The blame cannot rest there," said Ste. Marie sharply. "It is not deserved, and I shall not allow it to be left so. Captain Stewart lied to O'Hara throughout. You cannot leave the blame with an innocent man."
"Still—" she said, "such a man!"
Ste. Marie looked at her, frowning, and the girl turned her eyes away. She may have had the grace to be a little ashamed.