“To go to him—to appeal to him to help me,” she reflected. “It would be like begging him on again for Nina. It would be owning that it was all nonsense about Godfrey’s caring for her—and for Arthur’s sake, too. Why should I publish his humiliation to any but those who must know it?”
And again she stood irresolute and altogether wretched. And cabby, beginning to wake up and giving signs of being about to begin wondering what queer sort of a “fare, as didn’t know its own mind, he had got hold of,” doubled and trebled the girl’s embarrassment.
“I must go to some hotel for the night, I suppose,” she said to herself. “And oh! the horror of sitting there all the evening doing nothing, and lying there all night doing nothing—and Arthur, my darling brother, setting sail for America, before we can stop him; or perhaps—worse and worse—tossing in some miserable place among strangers, in a brain fever, where he may die—die, without having forgiven me!”
Nearly driven frantic by her own imaginings, she looked round her with a vague, altogether unreasonable appeal for help or guidance.
“What shall I do?” she ejaculated for the twentieth time, when just at that moment a carriage drew up—cabby rousing himself to move on so as to make room for it, for it was an unmistakable carriage, a small but thoroughly well-appointed brougham, quite capable of commanding his respectful deference—before the door where Lettice was standing, and a gentleman got out and came slowly over the pavement towards the house. The pavement, or the space between the houses and the real pavement, was wide there. It looked as if in far-off times there might have been a grass-plot or a flowerbed or two in front; and as the new-comer approached, Lettice had time to see him clearly. She looked at him—at the first glance a wild idea had struck her that possibly he might be Godfrey Auriol returned unexpectedly—with a sort of half-bewildered curiosity, but gradually a vague feeling came over her that he was not altogether unknown to her, that somewhere she had seen him before, or else that he resembled some one she had once known. But as he passed by, she recollected herself and turned sharply away. What was it to her what or who this stranger was? What was she made of to be standing there losing the precious moments in idle conjecture? And again the whole force of her mind became concentrated on the absorbing question—what was she to do?
She was turning at last to the cab, in a desperate resolution to go somewhere, when a quick step behind her made her look round. To her surprise there stood facing her the gentleman who a moment before had passed her to enter the house. He raised his hat, and she, looking at him, was again struck by his strange indefinite likeness to some one. He was slightly above the middle height, his dark hair already a very little hazed with grey. He looked a man of about forty, though in reality he was some years younger; his expression was gentle but rather piercing. There was great power, moral and intellectual, in his well-shaped forehead.
“Excuse me for addressing you,” he said. “But you seemed to me to be at a loss. Perhaps you are inquiring for some one you cannot find? I know this neighbourhood well. Can I help you?”
Lettice looked at him again. The gentleman’s tone was so respectful as well as kind, that the most timorous of maidens could scarcely have failed to feel confidence in him. And Lettice was the reverse of timorous; she was fearless to a fault, and her inexperience suggested no misgiving.
“Do you perhaps,” she began, “do you happen to know any one here—in this house? I am so disappointed at finding the friend, the gentleman I came to see, on most urgent business, away from home. And they won’t even give me his address?” she added girlishly, the tears welling up again as she spoke.
A curious look came into the kindly eyes that were regarding her, and the stranger made a very slight involuntary movement, almost as if he were going to lay his hand on her arm to console her as one would do to a troubled child. But he checked himself.