When he wandered that day all unwitting into Hertford House, his two angels had wandered with him—the good and the evil. The good had taken his hand, had whispered persuasively that his sad days were over—had shown him something so fair and sweet that——Ah, but the black spirit at his elbow had pushed forward. "After all these years in my service, do you think I am going to stand aside and see you join the opposition?"
He heard the dressing-bell ring, and realised that, if he meant to catch that train, he must call Hemming and have his things put together at once. Yet still he could not move. The bonds of his misery seemed to hold him tied to his chair, tied to this ghastly echoing house full of phantoms. He had had no food since about noon, and his emptiness had passed beyond the stage of hunger. It made him dazed. As he sat there, it was as though life surged within him for the last time, urging him to go to Worthing and face his doom like a man; and as though the old house rejoiced over his stupor, murmuring that his place was there, among the ruins of his own brutal folly and fruitless hate.
With an effort he stood up, found matches, lit the gas. He must and would look at that railway guide. Yet, when the light shone upon his untidy table, he forgot all about Bradshaw. There, lying where he had laid them before going out, were certain cases of jewellery which had that morning come back from London. He had had everything cleaned, and some things re-set, in the phantom hope of a time when he might be allowed to give her presents.
He fixed his eyes upon the leather cases, as if they had been so many coffins. For the moment he gave up the attempt to consider his expedition. It seemed so important that he should realise just how futile his attempts to undo the past must inevitably prove.
A light step came along the passage. He almost groaned, for it might have been hers; and he dreaded lest all his life he should be pursued by those haunting footfalls. Then a touch upon the handle of the door startled him in a second from apathy. The handle was turning, the door was about to open. What should he see? In his present exalted abnormal frame of mind, he might see anything, might even cause his thought of her to take shape, so that she stood in bodily presence before him.
It seemed to him only what he had foreseen when the slowly opening oak revealed her standing there.
He knew that it was her wraith, because she was so white—so unnaturally white. She wore white, too. Her eyes were dilated, with a dread which she could not conceal. It is possible that he might have heard the beating of her heart, had his own not pulsed so loudly.
He rose slowly to his feet—slowly, to match her entrance. He neither moved nor spoke, as she shut the door carefully behind her. As she did so the thought stirred in his mind that he had never heard of a ghost who closed a door. But his mind was a long way off. The part of him now active was something utterly different.
Then she moved forward towards him as he stood in the circle of light. She came on bravely until she was within a few paces of him, and then paused, and gave a little sound between a laugh and a gasp.
"Well," said she, and valiantly held out her hand, "I have come back, you see!"