The concierge made expressive gestures with his hands.
"Not Madame Morris," he suggested, somewhat puzzled. "Monsieur means Mademoiselle!"
"Ah! yes, of course," returned the Englishman, quickly, "A mere slip of the tongue! My message is for Mademoiselle, for Miss Morris. You will find her on that large settee just at the entrance of the salon."
He smiled grimly at the precise classification which to-morrow would be of a different value. The ghost of the smile lingered on his lips, as, disdaining the lift, he pulled Trascott towards the stairs.
"Let us walk up," he begged. "It will give me time to think."
Trascott moved beside him automatically and left Britton to his own reflections. That, he thought, was undoubtedly the surest way to victory.
Their ascent was slow and silent, their footfalls deadening to an odd, mysterious void on the thickly-padded steps. The mounting sensation, the absence of noise from his movements, seemed to lift Britton away from himself. His personality was effaced, in the physical sense, and the basic impulses which influenced his course of existence lay bared before an inner tribunal.
The vaster issue remained with him; the moral measure applied to his strength alone; the portentous effects of the next few minutes would be essentially moulded at the dictum of his emotional tendencies. The present exigency could be neither flouted nor shunned. This difficulty of another's evolving, augmented in no small measure by his own unseeing folly, demanded immediate and decisive solution. Apology was cowardice and parley an affront to Britton's frank fibre, and both of them smacked of guilt.
The suite of rooms taken by Maud Morris was situated on the first floor just to the right of the public hall, near the landing. She had at her disposal a luxurious drawing-room, a more luxurious boudoir, and bath and sleeping apartments.
Trascott stopped at the stair-head and folded his arms, signifying his exclusion from the approaching developments.