This was the guest who was coming to the house where Miles Hugo smiled from his frame in the picture-gallery—the house which would to-day have been Jem’s if T. Tembarom had not inherited it.
TEMBAROM returned some twenty-four hours after Miss Alicia had received his visitors for him. He had been “going into” absorbing things in London. His thoughts during his northward journey were puzzled and discouraged ones.
The price he would have given for a talk with Ann would not have been easy to compute. Her head, her level little head and her way of seeing into things and picking out facts without being rattled by what didn’t really count, would have been worth anything. The day itself was a discouraging one, with heavy threatenings of rain which did not fall.
He went to his room at once when he reached home. He was late, and Pearson told him that the ladies were dressing for dinner. Pearson was in waiting with everything in readiness for the rapid performance of his duties. Tembarom had learned to allow himself to be waited upon. He had, in fact, done this for the satisfying of Pearson, whose respectful unhappiness would otherwise have been manifest despite his efforts to conceal it. He dressed quickly and asked some questions about Strangeways. Otherwise Pearson thought he seemed preoccupied.
On his way to the drawing-room he deflected from the direct path, turning aside for a moment to the picture-gallery because for a reason of his own he wanted to take a look at Miles Hugo.
The gallery was dim and gloomy enough in the purple-gray twilight. He walked through it without glancing at the pictures until he came to the portrait, and looked hard at the handsome face.
“Gee!” he exclaimed under his breath, “it’s queer! Gee!”
Then he turned suddenly round toward one of the big windows. He turned because he had been startled by a sound, a movement. Some one was standing before the window. For a second’s space the figure seemed as though it were almost one with the purple-gray clouds that were its background. It was a tall young woman, and her dress was of a thin material of exactly their color—dark-gray and purple at once. The wearer held her head high and haughtily. She had a beautiful, stormy face, and the slender, black brows were drawn together in a frown. Tembarom had never seen a girl so handsome and disdainful. He had, indeed, never been looked at as she looked at him when she moved slightly forward.
He knew who it was. It was the Lady Joan girl, and the sudden sight of her momentarily “rattled” him.