‘I am very sorry,’ murmured Laura, with a look in which compassion struggled against disgust. ‘Come this way. We can talk quietly in my room.’
She went upstairs, the stranger following close at her heels, to the gallery out of which John Treverton’s study, which was also her own favourite sitting-room, opened. It was the room where she and her husband had met for the first time, two years ago, on just such a night as this. It adjoined the bedroom where John Treverton was now lying. She had no desire that he should be a witness to her interview with this visitor of to-night; but she had a sense of protection in the knowledge that her husband would be within call. Hitherto, on the rare occasions when she had been constrained to meet this man, she had confronted him alone, defenceless; and she had never felt her loneliness so keenly as at those times.
‘I ought to have told John the whole truth,’ she said to herself; ‘but how could I—how could I bear to acknowledge——’
She glanced backward, with a suppressed shudder, at the man following her. They were at the door of the study by this time. She opened it, and he went in after her and shut the door behind him.
A fire was burning cheerily on the pretty, bright-looking hearth, antique in its quaint ornamentation, modern in the artistic beauty of its painted tiles and low brass fender. There were candles on the mantelpiece and on the table, where an old-fashioned spirit bottle on a silver tray cheered the soul of the wayfarer. He filled a glass of brandy and drained it without a word.
He gave a deep sigh of contentment or relief as he set down the glass.
‘That’s a little bit better,’ he said, and then he threw off his overcoat and scarf, and planted himself with his back to the fire, and the face which he turned to the light was the face of Mr. Desrolles.
The man had aged within the last six months. Every line in his face had deepened. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes haggard and bloodshot. The sands of life run fast for a man whose chief nourishment is brandy.
‘Well,’ he exclaimed, in a hard, husky voice. ‘You do not welcome me very warmly, my child.’
‘I did not expect you.’