“If I have an opportunity of speaking to my son’s wife alone,” she said, “have you any message to give?”
Sir Patrick produced a little note.
“May I appeal to your ladyship’s kindness to give her this?” The gate was opened by the servant-girl, as Lady Holchester took the note. “Remember,” reiterated Sir Patrick, earnestly “if I can be of the smallest service to her—don’t think of my position with Mr. Delamayn. Send for me at once.”
Julius and his mother were conducted into the drawing-room. The girl informed them that her master had gone up stairs to lie down, and that he would be with them immediately.
Both mother and son were too anxious to speak. Julius wandered uneasily about the room. Some books attracted his notice on a table in the corner—four dirty, greasy volumes, with a slip of paper projecting from the leaves of one of them, and containing this inscription, “With Mr. Perry’s respects.” Julius opened the volume. It was the ghastly popular record of Criminal Trials in England, called the Newgate Calendar. Julius showed it to his mother.
“Geoffrey’s taste in literature!” he said, with a faint smile.
Lady Holchester signed to him to put the book back.
“You have seen Geoffrey’s wife already—have you not?” she asked.
There was no contempt now in her tone when she referred to Anne. The impression produced on her by her visit to the cottage, earlier in the day, associated Geoffrey’s wife with family anxieties of no trivial kind. She might still (for Mrs. Glenarm’s sake) be a woman to be disliked—but she was no longer a woman to be despised.
“I saw her when she came to Swanhaven,” said Julius. “I agree with Sir Patrick in thinking her a very interesting person.”