“Are you hard at work?” the Count went on. “No. You cannot work with a bad headache. Let us take a hansom home and blow it away. Alexia is alone, and dull enough, I expect. Come!”
He rose with a smile, and laid his hand affectionately on the other’s shoulder.
“Yes,” answered Herriard, feeling that, though unseasonable, it was the only thing possible. “I shall be glad, if you will wait till I make myself tidy.”
He went out warily into the lobby. The outer door was ajar. He tried to recollect. “Prosper,” he said, returning to the room, “do you remember whether I shut the outside door when you came in?”
“No, my dear fellow,” he laughed. “I performed that office myself.”
“You are sure?”
“Quite positive.”
So Gastineau was gone. The open door showed that. Yet it was with an apprehensive watchfulness that Herriard entered the little dressing-room where his enemy must have waited. He was not there now. He had disappeared; gone out upon the world an impersonal force for evil, a living man with, for the time, no legal existence.
The relief from the close, baleful atmosphere of the chambers and the drive through the comparatively fresh air somewhat revived Herriard, and by the time they reached Green Street he had resolved upon the course he would take. Alexia was alone; how glad she was to see him the love-light in her eyes told him, and his heart sank, he felt bitterly resentful against fate at the thought of the evil of which he was the messenger. Count Prosper was not long in tactfully remembering some work he had to finish, and left the lovers together.
“Geoffrey,” Alexia said, looking into the face just raised from a kiss, “you are not yourself to-night, you are troubled: tell me.”