"Yes, Susan?" answered Mrs. Quentyns, in a gentle interrogative tone.
"If you please, ma'am, master has been very late coming home when you was in the country—not till past midnight most nights."
"Thank you, Susan; but Mr. Quentyns will probably be in earlier to-night, and I wish to remain up. Go to bed, and tell cook to do the same. Oh, and please, I should like Miss Judy to have a cup of tea brought to her room at eight to-morrow morning. Good-night, Susan."
The parlor-maid withdrew.
"And don't she look beautiful as a pictur," she muttered under her breath. "Pore young lady, I doubt if she's pleased with master though. Him staying away and all on the first night as she comes back. I wouldn't set up for him ef I were her—no, that I wouldn't; I wouldn't make so little of myself; but she's proud, too, is Mrs. Quentyns, and she don't let on; no, not a bit. Well, I respect her for that, but I misdoubt me if all is right atween that pair."
Susan went upstairs to confide her suspicions to cook. They talked in low whispers together, and wondered what the mystery could be which was keeping Quentyns from his pretty wife's side.
In the meantime, in the silent house the moments for the one anxious watcher went slowly by. Her novel was not interesting—she let it fall on her knees, and looking at the little clock on the mantelpiece, counted the moments until eleven should strike. She quite expected that Jasper would be home at eleven. It did not enter for a moment into her calculations that he could be absent on this first night of her return beyond that hour. When the eleven musical strokes sounded on the little clock, and were echoed in many deeper booms from without, she got up, and opening the drawing-room door, stepped out into the little hall.
Footsteps kept passing and passing in the street. Cabs kept rolling up to other doors and rolling away again. Jasper must surely arrive at any moment.
Hilda softly opened the hall door, and standing on the steps, looked up and down the gas-lit street. If Jasper were walking home he would see her. The lamp light from within threw her slim figure into strong relief. A man passing by stopped for an instant to look at her.
Hilda shut the hall door hastily in fear and distress. The man had looked as if he might say something rude. She returned to her little drawing room, and sitting down by the dying fire stared fixedly into its embers until her eyes were full of tears.