The clock struck five as he went downstairs. A cold white mist veiled the park, and crept into the house. The fire glowed redly on the hearth in the hall, before which the footman sat in a Glastonbury chair, reading the newspaper.
‘Mrs. Piper not returned yet?’ asked the master of the house.
‘No, sir.’
The man vacated the seat in his master’s favour, and went off to his tea and toast in the servants’ hall—such buttered toast as could never have been in the first Mrs. Piper’s time, when there were close calculations weekly as to the pounds of butter that had been consumed—‘made away with’ the late Mrs. Piper called it when she was angry—during the last seven days.
Mr. Piper sat before the fire, looking straight into the glowing pile of coal and wood, and thinking of the letters he had just read. His mind was so full of these that the fact of his wife’s prolonged absence troubled him not at all. It did not even strike him as strange that she should be so long away. That other wonder, the strangeness of her treachery, the wonder that any woman could so deceive, absorbed every thought. He sat before the fire, meditating this great iniquity, and with only a dreamy sense that the day had been long, and that evening was drawing in.
So he sat, till he was startled by the sound of wheels upon the gravel drive. He went to the door and looked out through the glass panel. A carriage was coming slowly up the drive, followed by a man and woman on horseback, Captain Standish and Miss Porkman. Then came a horse led by a couple of men—a black horse, that walked lame, and hung his head dejectedly.
Where was his wife among all these?
He opened the door and went out upon the broad stone steps. The carriage came up at a foot pace. A man got out—little Mr. Namby, the village surgeon.
He came up the steps to Mr. Piper. Captain Standish dismounted and joined them.
Even in the autumn dusk Mr. Piper could see that his foe was ashy pale, and moved by some violent agitation. Standish tried to speak, but the words would not come.