“I’ll go and see,” said Amelius.
“And stay to lunch?” Regina reiterated.
“Not to-day, my dear.”
“To-morrow, then?”
“Yes, to-morrow.” So he escaped. As he opened the door, he looked back, and kissed his hand. Regina raised her head for a moment, and smiled charmingly. She was hard at work again over her embroidery.
CHAPTER 5
The door of Mrs. Farnaby’s ground-floor room, at the back of the house, was partially open. She was on the watch for Amelius.
“Come in!” she cried, the moment he appeared in the hall. She pulled him into the room, and shut the door with a bang. Her face was flushed, her eyes were wild. “I have something to tell you, you dear good fellow,” she burst out excitedly—“Something in confidence, between you and me!” She paused, and looked at him with sudden anxiety and alarm. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked.
The sight of the room, the reference to a secret, the prospect of another private conference, forced back the mind of Amelius, in one breathless instant, to his first memorable interview with Mrs. Farnaby. The mother’s piteously hopeful words, in speaking of her lost daughter, rang in his ears again as if they had just fallen from her lips. “She may be lost in the labyrinth of London.... To-morrow, or ten years hence, you might meet with her.” There were a hundred chances against it—a thousand, ten thousand chances against it. The startling possibility flashed across his brain, nevertheless, like a sudden flow of daylight across the dark. “Have I met with her, at the first chance?”