"I hope I've done right," Mary said.
"Quite right," Julia answered, though she did not feel so sure of it. The name and the vague description of the visitor somehow suggested to her mind the stranger who had ridden past with young Mr. Rawson-Clew. She went up-stairs, uneasy as much from intuition as from experience. In the hall she stood a minute. The dining-room door did not shut too well, the lock was old and worn, and unless it was fastened carefully, it came open; the Captain never managed to fasten it, and now it stood ajar; Julia could hear something of what was said within almost as soon as she reached the top of the kitchen stairs. The visitor spoke quietly, his words were not audible, but the Captain's voice was raised with excitement.
"The money, sir, the money that your cousin lent—accommodation between gentlemen—"
So Julia heard incompletely, and then another disjointed sentence.
"Do you take me for an adventurer, a sharper? I am a soldier, sir, a soldier and a gentleman—at least, I was—I mean I was a soldier, I am a gentleman—"
Julia came swiftly up the hall, the instinct of the female to spread frail wings and protect her helpless belongings (old equally as much as young) was strong upon her. The pushed open the dining-room door and walked in.
"Father," she said, "is anything the matter?"
Both men turned, the stranger clearly surprised and annoyed by the interruption, the Captain for a moment thinking of pulling himself together and dismissing his daughter with a lie. But he did not do it; he was too shaken to think quickly, also there was a sense of reinforcement in her presence; this he did not realise; indeed, he realised nothing except that she spoke again before he had collected himself.
"Is it about the money Mr. Rawson-Clew lent you?" she asked.
He nodded, and she turned to the other man, who had risen on her entrance, and now stood with his back to the evil-smelling stove which Mary had lighted as usual in honour of Captain Polkington's visitors. She measured him swiftly, and no detail escaped her; the well-bred impassive face, where the annoyance caused by her entrance showed only in the rather hard eyes; the straight figure, even the perfection of his tailoring and the style of his boots—she summed it all up with the rapidity of one who has had to depend on her wits before. And her wits were to be depended on, for, in spite of the warmth of her protective anger, she felt his superiority of person, position and ability, and, only too probably, of cause also. She could have laughed at the contrast he presented to her father and herself and the surroundings. It was perhaps for this reason that she asked him maliciously, "Have you come to collect the debt?"