CHAPTER XI.
TWO UNWELCOME VISITORS.
The business of living goes on all the same let who will retire from active participation in it, and, accordingly, Mrs. Mortomley and Lord Darsham sat down to dinner, although the whilom master of the house lay dead in that small room on the other side the hall, where he had made his exit from this world. But, in truth, that dinner was a very funereal affair. There was a something ghastly in eating of the ruined man's substance; in drinking of the wines he had selected; in occupying the apartment where he must often have sat at table with a guest no one else could see facing him; and the conversation in Williams's presence, compulsorily of no private nature, flagged as conversation did not often flag when Dolly held one of the battledores.
With great persuasion Mrs. Werner had been induced to swallow a draught ordered for her by the family physician, and she lay in a sleep as sound and almost as dreamless as that which enfolded the silent figure lying all alone in the twilight of the summer's evening.
Thirty hours before, he was alive; and now, his spirit had started on the long, lonesome journey; and through the gloom of the Valley of the Shadow no human eye could follow him.
Dolly could not get over the horror of it all; and when Mr. Forde's knock woke the echoes of the house, she started from her seat in an access of terror, and exclaiming,
"Oh! let me get upstairs before he comes in," left the room, and ran upstairs to Mrs. Werner's apartment.
Meanwhile, Williams, before answering the summons, inquired whether his Lordship would be pleased to see the expected visitor, and if so, where.
"Yes," was the answer; "show him in here."
Mr. Forde entered. He had employed the interval between his two visits in alternating between two opinions. One, that Henry Werner would come to life again; the other, that Lord Darsham would wipe off the deceased's indebtedness to the St. Vedast Wharf Company.