"Ah! she is all that, and more," he exclaimed, bitterly, showing by those quick words where his thoughts were.
A slight cough interrupted him. He looked up quickly and saw Robert Lyle standing within the half-open door. The old man moved forward deprecatingly.
"Pardon my abrupt entrance, Captain Ernscliffe," he said; "I knocked several times without eliciting a reply, so I ventured to enter through the half-open door."
Captain Ernscliffe arose and shook his visitor's hand with a cordiality tempered by an indefinable restraint.
"Pray make no apologies, sir," he said. "They are quite unnecessary."
He placed a chair for the visitor, then resumed his own seat, gazing rather curiously at the pleasant-looking, kindly old gentleman, who reminded him so much of his wife's father.
What had brought him there, he wondered, with some slight nervousness at the thought.
Mr. Lyle looked a little nervous, too. He wiped the dew from his fine old forehead, and remarked that it was a warm day.
"I suppose so," assented the host in a tone that seemed to say he had not thought about it before.
"I have come on a thankless mission, Lawrence," Mr. Lyle said, with some slight embarrassment. "At least on an unsolicited one. I wish to speak to you of—of Queenie."