'James, you are ill,' said Mrs. Hunter, advancing in her quiet, composed manner, but taking no notice whatever of the stranger. 'Can I get anything for you? Shall we send for Dr. Bevary?'
'No, don't do that; it is going off. You will oblige me by leaving us,' he whispered to her. 'I am very busy.'
'You seem too ill for business,' she rejoined. 'Can you not put it off for an hour? Rest might be of service to you.'
'No, madam, the business cannot be put off,' spoke up Lawyer Gwinn.
And down he sat in a chair, with a determined air of conscious power—just as his sister had sat herself down, a fortnight before, in Mr. Hunter's hall.
Mrs. Hunter quitted the room at once, leaving her husband and the stranger in it. Austin followed her. Her face wore a puzzled, vexed look, as she turned it upon Austin. 'Who is that person?' she asked. 'His manner to me appeared to be strangely insolent.'
An instinct, for which Austin perhaps could not have accounted had he tried, caused him to suppress the fact that it was the brother of the Miss Gwinn who had raised a commotion at Mr. Hunter's house. He answered that he had not seen the person at the office previously, his tone being as careless a one as he could assume. And Mrs. Hunter, who was of the least suspicious nature possible, let it pass. Her mind, too, was filled with the thought of her husband's suffering state.
'Does Mr. Hunter appear to you to be ill?' she asked of Austin, somewhat abruptly.
'He looked so, I think.'