“Twenty minutes to nine. Dale has been in twice in the last quarter of an hour to say that the dinner is being spoilt. Hark! There’s the door, and Martin’s step. Thank God, there is nothing wrong!” cried Allegra, getting up and going out to meet her brother.
Colonel Disney’s countenance as he stood in the lamplight was not so reassuring as the substantial fact of his return. It was something to know that he was not dead, or hurt in any desperate way—victim of any of those various accidents which the morbid mind of woman can imagine if husband or kinsman be unusually late for dinner; but that things were all right with him was open to question. He was ghastly pale, and had a troubled, half-distracted expression which seared Allegra almost as much as his prolonged absence had done.
“I am sure there is something wrong!” she said, when they were seated at dinner, and the parlour-maid had withdrawn for a minute or two in pursuance of her duties, having started them fairly with the fish.
“Oh no, there is nothing particularly amiss; I have been worried a little, that’s all. I am very sorry to be so unconscionably late for dinner, and to sit down in this unkempt condition. But I loitered at the club looking at the London papers. I shall have to go to London to-morrow, Isola—on business—and I want you to go with me. Have you any objection?”
She started at the word London, and looked at him curiously—surprised, yet resolute—as if she were not altogether unprepared for some startling proposition on his part.
“Of course not. I would rather go with you if you really have occasion to go.”
“I really have. It is very important. You won’t mind our deserting you for two or three days, will you, Allegra?” asked Disney, turning to his sister. “Mrs. Baynham will be at your service as chaperon if you want to go out anywhere while we are away. It is an office in which she delights.”
“I won’t trouble her. I shall stay at home, and paint all the time. I have a good deal of work to do to my pictures before they will be ready for the winter exhibition, and the time for sending in is drawing dreadfully near. You need have no anxiety as to my gadding about, Martin. You will find me shut up in my painting-room, come home when you will.”
Later, when she and her brother were alone in the drawing-room, she went up to him softly and put her arms around his neck.