A short while afterwards a message was brought in to Barton, and he asked me to excuse him for a few minutes, as he must see someone—a groom I think he said—and would rejoin me in the drawing-room.
I went upstairs and entered into conversation with my hostess, whose manners had completely changed. She talked now with a feverish rapidity, and I noticed with the most intense surprise, and I must add with a creeping sensation of horror, that she had caught Barton's trick of constantly shooting anxious glances at the door. I suppose she saw that I had observed her, for she turned her chair round with its back to the door and said—
"I was wondering why my husband did not come."
I told her that he was engaged for the moment, and she continued—
"Have you noticed any change in him, Mr. Campbell?"
"He seems marvellously well," I replied. "We really owe a great debt to the two little doctors and to——"
I stopped abruptly. Mrs. Barton had grown ghastly pale, and I remembered how fiercely the Jew had endeavoured to attack her in that terrible little room in Florence. Once again she seemed to read my thoughts.
"I knew that man Israel Hoffmann, Mr. Campbell," she said. "I am a Russian, you know, and we—my father and I—disliked him, and he hated us, and had threatened often to revenge—that is, to injure us. My father warned me against him only a few months before he died, and you see how the man tried to attack me on that night. We do not like Jews in Russia you know, Mr. Campbell.—Why, what is it?"
"Nothing," I said, hastily, but I'm afraid my voice shook; "I thought I saw your husband coming in—I was mistaken."
It was no mistake, I knew. It was Barton's face that I had seen looking round the door, with his eyes fixed on his wife; but as I spoke the head was withdrawn, and the door softly closed.