"And now about your own affairs, my dear Mrs. Branston?" John Saltram said with a forced cheerfulness, drawing his chair up to the table and assuming a business-like manner. "These tiresome letters of your lawyers'; let me see what use I can be in the matter."
Adela Branston produced the letters with rather an absent air. They were letters about very insignificant affairs; the renewal of a lease or two; the reinvestment of a sum of money that had been lent on mortgage, and had fallen in lately; transactions that scarcely called for the employment of Mr. Saltram's intellectual powers. But he gave them very serious attention nevertheless, well aware, all the time that this business consultation was only the widow's excuse for her visit; and while she seemed to be listening to his advice, her eyes were wandering round the room all the time, noting the dust and confusion, the soda-water bottles huddled in one corner, the pile of books heaped in a careless mass in another, the half-empty brandy-bottle between a couple of stone ink-jars on the mantelpiece. She was thinking what a dreary place it was, and that there was the stamp of decay and ruin somehow upon the man who occupied it. And she loved him so well, and would have given all the world to have redeemed his life.
It is doubtful whether Adela Branston heard one syllable of that counsel which Mr. Saltram administered so gravely. Her mind was full of the failure of this desperate step which she had taken. He seemed farther from her now than before they had met, obstinately adverse to profit by her friendship, cold and cruel.
"You will come and dine with us very soon, I hope," she said as she rose to go, "My cousin, Mrs. Pallinson, will be home in a day or two. She has been nursing her son for the last few days; but he is much better, and I expect her back immediately. We shall be so pleased to see you; you will name an early day, won't you? Monday shall we say, or Sunday? You can't plead business on Sunday."
"My dear Mrs. Branston, I really am not well enough for visiting."
"But dining with us does not come under the head of visiting. We will be quite alone, if you wish it. I shall be hurt if you refuse to come."
"If you put it in that way, I cannot refuse; but I fear you will find me wretched company."
"I am not afraid of that. And now I must ask you to forgive me for having wasted so much of your time, before I say good-morning."
"There has been no time of mine wasted. I have learned to know your generous heart even better than I knew it before, and I think I always knew that it was a noble one. Believe me, I am not ungrateful or indifferent to so much goodness."
He accompanied her downstairs, and through the courts and passages to the place where she had left her cab, in spite of the ticket-porter, who was hanging about ready to act as escort. He saw her safely seated in the hackney vehicle, and then walked slowly back to his chambers, thinking over the interview which had just concluded.