"I don't know why his coming back like this should make me feel so nervous," mused Manners. "I am more psychic than you are, Herr Baron."
Cherriton looked at the big, fat figure in the chair opposite him. He curled his lip in faint contempt.
Meanwhile John Manton, having knocked at the door of 65, Bowles Avenue, found, to his astonishment, that that door was opened by a girl of most extreme beauty. He had come there under orders from Dacent Smith to discover the identity of the sender of the telegram signed "Elaine." He had been given many instructions during that afternoon, but as he stood upon the threshold of No. 65 a swift admiration leapt into his eyes for the girl who confronted him on the doorstep.
"May I come in?" asked John.
"Of course," answered the girl. To his amazement, she seized his hand as she spoke. "Oh, how long you have been!" she said. She drew him into the hall and closed the door. Silence and caution were the parts John had been ordered to play. He did not withdraw his hand from her warm grasp. "You never came, you never wrote," continued the girl.
"I wasn't able to," John answered, truthfully.
"And yet I told you, Bernard," she went on, looking up into his face—he was glad that the light in the hall was not intense—" and yet I told you, Bernard, that if you confessed everything to your father he would forgive."
"He has forgiven a great deal," answered Manton, vaguely. He looked down at her—a little colour had come into her cheeks, and, as for her eyes, he had never seen eyes which evoked in him so much admiration. At that moment Manners put his face out at the door of the inner room; then swiftly withdrew it.
"Who's that?" John asked, quickly.
"It's a man who has come to see you, Bernard; but before you go in I want to say"—she laid her hand softly on the lapel of John's coat—"I want to say, Bernard, that I forgive you—everything." She was smiling at him, a smile of wonderful beauty. "After all, Bernard," she whispered, "I am your wife, and it is a wife's privilege to forgive."