“I told her you could not, ma’am,” the man replied. He was a very magnificent individual, who impressed shareholders wonderfully, and certainly considered himself a much more important personage than the secretary; yet, notwithstanding his superiority over every one else connected with the “Protector,” he had always been graciously affable towards Mrs. Dudley, and now, in her trouble, he felt very sorry for her indeed. He had children of his own, so he informed Mrs. Piggott, and “knew what it was;” whereupon he had taken upon himself to assure the stranger Mrs. Dudley could not possibly be disturbed, and that he should decline delivering any message whatever to her.
But the “young person” had been importunate—she had resolutely refused to take “no” for an answer—and she so persistently insisted on a note she produced being given to Mrs. Dudley, that Tifford at length wavered.
“If you give her that note,” the stranger asserted, “she will see me; and if you do not give it to her, she will be sorry hereafter to know it was kept from her. I will wait outside till she has read it.” And so saying, she coolly stepped out into the night through the open hall-door, whereat she had found Mr. Tifford meditating, in the midst of a silence which seemed, no doubt, to him, as great as that Harvey found amongst the tombs.
Frequently, Mr. Tifford declared Lincoln’s Inn Fields was as lively as a churchyard; and, at the precise moment the young woman came up and accosted him, he was thinking he might as well be buried alive as shut up there.
“You can close the door,” she remarked, noticing his hesitation; whereupon Mr. Tifford at once invited her to “step inside” and sit down, while he went upstairs to his mistress.
The stranger stepped inside as permitted, but did not sit down; she stood on the mat, with her shawl wrapped tightly around her and her thick veil tied close under her chin, until Tifford returning bade her follow him upstairs.
He ushered her into the dim drawing-room, and then shut the door.
By the hearth stood Mrs. Dudley.
“You bring me news,” she said, “of——” But before she could finish her sentence the stranger advanced out of the gloom, and flinging herself on Heather’s neck, broke out into a passion of weeping. It was the wanderer come home at last!—it was Bessie, so long mourned, so long looked for, restored at an hour when her advent was least expected.
To Heather it seemed almost as though one had been given back to her from the grave, and for a moment she drew out of it a vague augury of recovery for Lally.