‘Disturbed? God forbid!’ said Lawford, but his dark eyes failed to move these lightest hazel. ‘Well,’ he continued nonchalantly, ‘perhaps—perhaps it—would be as well if Mrs Lawford should know that I am here. No, thank you, I won’t come in. Please go and tell—’ But even as the maid turned to obey, Sheila herself appeared at the dining-room door in hat and veil.
Lawford hesitated an immeasurable moment. In one swift glance he perceived the lamplit mystery of evening, beckoning, calling, pleading—Fly, fly! Home’s here for you. Begin again, begin again. And there before him in quiet and hostile decorum stood maid and mistress. He took off his hat and stepped quickly in.
‘So late, so very late, I fear,’ he began glibly. ‘A sudden call, a perfectly impossible distance. Shall we disturb him, do you think?’
‘Wouldn’t it,’ began Sheila softly, ‘be rather a pity perhaps? Dr Simon seemed to think.... But, of course, you must decide that.’
Ada turned quiet small eyes.
‘No, no, by no means,’ he almost mumbled.
And a hard, slow smile passed over Sheila’s face. ‘Excuse me one moment,’ she said; ‘I will see if he is awake.’ She swept swiftly forward, superb and triumphant, beneath the gaze of those dark, restless eyes. But so still was home and street that quite distinctly a clear and youthful laughter was heard, and light footsteps approaching. Sheila paused. Ada, in the act of closing the door, peered out. ‘Miss Alice, ma’am,’ she said.
And in this infinitesimal advantage of time Dr Ferguson had seized his vanishing opportunity, and was already swiftly mounting the stairs. Mrs Lawford stood with veil half raised and coldly smiling lips and, as if it were by pre-arrangement, her daughter’s laughing greeting from the garden, and from the landing above her, a faint ‘Ah, and how are we now?’ broke out simultaneously. And Ada, silent and discreet, had thrown open the door again to the twilight and to the young people ascending the steps.
Lawford was still sitting on his bed before a cold and ashy hearth when Sheila knocked at the door.
‘Yes?’ he said; ‘who’s there?’ No answer followed. He rose with a shuddering sigh and turned the key. His wife entered.