It was almost sundown when Crawford reached his lodgings. Layard had come in and gone out again, and Hetty was alone in their sitting-room. She had just come down from little Freddie, who, after a valiant fight against Billy Winkers, had at last succumbed. Crawford saw Hetty at the window, and motioned that he wished to speak with her.
"Mr. Layard out?" asked he, after greetings.
"Yes," said the girl; "the evening was so lovely, he said he'd go for a walk."
"The evening is lovely, no doubt," said he; "but is there such a thing as a tolerable walk within reasonable distance?"
Hetty had opened the sitting-room door, and now stood on the threshold.
"There is no nice walk quite close, but Alfred often goes for a stroll to Greenwich Park. That is not far off, you know, and the air there is so sweet and pure after the heat and unpleasantness of the works all day."
She thought he was speaking merely out of politeness, and, believing he wished to be gone, drew back a little into the room.
He was in no great hurry to go upstairs. He knew what her movement indicated, but he construed it differently.
"Am I invited to enter?" he asked suavely, bowing slightly, and making a gesture of gallant humility with his arms and shoulders.
"Certainly," she said, smiling and making way for him. He did look a powerful man, she thought, who could dare danger, and rescue and carry out of the flames an invalid woman. He was not very handsome, it was true, and there was something unusual about his restless eyes. But perhaps that might be quite usual with heroes. She had never before met a man who had rescued any one from death. She had not, that she could remember, ever met a man, either, who had married a widow. According to plays and satirists, the man who married a widow had more courage than the man who would do no more than face death in a burning house.