Making an excuse that I wanted to obtain a paper from the rack in the dining-room, I entered and looked around. Nothing had apparently been disturbed, but on the mantelshelf I saw a plain gold signet ring that had evidently been overlooked. Taking it up, I examined it, and found engraved on the inside the initials “G.S.” It was evidently a ring from the dead man’s finger.
I put it down, scrutinised the room carefully, looked in the grate, but saw nothing, then taking up a paper, went out, wishing Mrs Horton “good-day.”
Punctually at the hour appointed, Saunders ushered Dora into my room. She was elegantly dressed in a smart tailor-made gown of dove-grey cloth with a large black hat with feathers, and wore a flimsy veil that rather enhanced than concealed her beauty.
“I feel I’m becoming awfully reckless in making this visit,” she commenced with a laugh when she had seated herself in my chair, “but when I got home last night I received such a strange letter from Jack that I felt compelled to seek your advice.”
“If I can be of any service I shall be delighted,” I said.
She seemed nervously agitated, and her eyes were, I thought, unduly heavy, as if she were unusually anxious.
“Thanks, you are always kind,” she said. “Both Mabel and myself always look upon you as our big brother. We often wonder why you never marry. We shall hear of it, however, some day.”
“Never, I hope,” I answered with a forced smile, remembering the grim tragedy of my marriage, and recollecting that her lover had once made the very same remark to me.
“Why never? If you had a wife you would be far happier. At present you have only your man to look after your personal comforts, and surely your dinners at your club can never be so pleasant as if you dined at home in company with a pretty wife.”
“Upon my word,” I cried, laughing, “I shall believe that you actually intend to propose to me next, Dora. I think if it were not—well, if it were not for an obstacle whose name is Jack Bethune, I should be inclined to offer you marriage.”