The landlord went behind the bar to look after some besmocked gentry who were drinking in front of it, leaving his wife to attend to Holdsworth.
“What might you like to order, sir?” she inquired, presenting herself at a side door.
He asked her to bring him some wine and biscuits, saying that he had no appetite now, but would dine or sup later on. He looked at her very attentively as he spoke, with an idea in his mind that he had seen her before.
She went away, and he left his seat and paced the room with a wild look of distress on his face, and bitter anxiety and fear in his heart. Once he snatched up his hat and advanced to the door, but hesitated and resumed his agitated walk. His feelings were those of a man just awakened to consciousness from the effects of a blow that had stunned him. His body trembled, his lips worked, and he held his hands squeezed tightly together. His sufferings were indeed terrible. He looked back upon the blank of five years and recoiled before the conjectures his heart prompted as to the things which had happened in that time. Sometimes his impulse was to rush forth and cry aloud for Dolly, and then a deadly chill came over him, and he shut his eyes and beat aside his thoughts, as though they were something tangible and apart from him, with his hand.
When the door opened, he bit his lip to control himself, and kept his back turned upon the woman in feigned inspection of a print upon the wall. As she was about to withdraw, he looked at her and said:
“Have you lived long in Southbourne?”
“Yes, sir, many years.”
He seated himself and drank a glass of wine.
“How many years?”