He summoned Nevins. The curtain he replaced on the staring face of the mirror. Whence the thought came from, he did not know, but it occurred to him that the scene was like a scene from a novel.
"Nevins," he asked, "was anyone in my rooms?"
"Mr. Spalding-Wentworth, sir."
Orson Vane laughed,—a loud, gusty, trumpeting laugh.
He understood. But he understood, also, that the accident that had brought the soul of Spalding-Wentworth into his keeping had decreed, also, that the dominance should not be, as on a former time, with the usurper.
He knew that the soul of Spalding-Wentworth, to which he gave the refuge of his own body, was a small soul.
Yet even little souls have their spheres of influence.
CHAPTER XI.
It was a morning such as the wild flowers, out in the suburban meadows, must have thought fit for a birthday party. As for the town, it lost, under that keen air and gentle sun, whatever of garish and unhealthy glamour it had displayed the night before.