"At Northlands."
"She knows I'm coming?"
"Yes," said I.
Liosha joined us, accompanied by a porter, carrying their exiguous baggage. We walked to the exit, without saying much, and settled ourselves in the limousine, my guests in the back seat, I on one of the little chairs facing them. We started.
"My dear old chap," said I, leaning forward. "I've got something to tell you. I didn't like to write about it. But it has got to be told, and I may as well get it over now."
It was a subdued and half-scared Jaffery who greeted Barbara and Susan at our front door. The jollity had gone out of him. He was nothing but a vast hulk filled with self-reproach. It was his fault, his very grievous and careless fault for having postponed the destruction of the papers, and for having left them loose and unsecured in his rooms. He all but beat his breast. If Doria had died of the shock his would be the blame. He saluted Barbara with the air of one entering a house of mourning.
"You mustn't look so woe-begone," she said. "Something like this was bound to happen. I have dreaded it all along—and now it has happened and the earth hasn't come to an end."
We stood in the hall, while Franklin divested the visitors of their outer wraps and trappings.
"And, Liosha," Barbara continued, throwing her arms round as much of Liosha as they could grasp—she had already kissed her a warm welcome—"it's a shame, dear, to depress you the moment you come into the place. You'll wish you were at sea again."