Sara could not forbear a smile: Dick would have gone to the other end of the kingdom for half-a-dozen pots of assorted jam: but it changed to gravity as she turned to Watton.
"Watton, do you know I have been so great a coward as not to ask my aunt decisively whether she intends to have them up for the holidays. I very much fear she does not; and therefore I shrink from asking, lest the fear should be made a certainty."
"Poor boys!" ejaculated Watton. "Well, of course it's all very different from what it was. Ah, Miss Sara! there are too many will find cause to miss the good Dr. Davenal!"
With the rebellious sorrow, called up by the words, rising in her heart, Sara walked along the hot and bustling streets again. It was a little past twelve when she reached Essex Street, and in going up the stair she happened to turn her head, and saw, stepping quickly in at the outer door, Oswald Cray. She hoped he had not seen her; she thought he had not; and she hastened on, her pulses beating. What strange coincidence could have brought him there?
Mr. Alfred King had arrived. Sara was shown through a busy room into a smaller one, long and narrow, apparently partitioned off from a third room, which she did not see. The room contained a couple of chairs, a table-desk, and a slender, dandy sort of gentleman; nothing more. He was leaning against the table, doing something to his nails with a penknife, an eye-glass in his eye, and a black moustache with rings at its ends curling on his lip.
"Mr. Alfred King?" she said interrogatively, for there had been no introduction.
Mr. Alfred King bowed. He removed his hat, which he had been wearing, shut up the penknife with a flourish of his thin white hands, courteously stepped forward, and was altogether the gentleman again.
"Miss Sara Davenal, I presume?"
How Sara entered on her task she never knew. Its nature made her feel sadly confused and diffident, as if all self-possession had gone out of her. Whatever her brother's crime might have been, she assumed that the gentleman before her had cognisance of it; and it rendered her miserably conscious in that first moment. Very much embarrassed, and aware that she was so, she apologised for the delay in the payment of the money, stated that she expected it daily, and begged of Mr. King to be kind enough to wait a little longer. Just what she had stated in her letter: in fact she had nothing else to urge.
"I am exceedingly sorry to put you to the inconvenience of coming here, Miss Davenal," he said, in a courteous but drawling tone. "It is reversing the appropriate order of things. I should have been better pleased to wait upon you."