“As a last resort,” he replied, with a flash of humour and a touch of hope. “If you would—commute my sentence.”
She passed him, and picking up her skirts, paused in the window.
“I will give you one more chance,” she said.
This was the conversation that, by repeating itself, filled the interval of her drive home. So oblivious was she to Howard's presence, that he called her twice from her corner of the carriage after the vehicle had stopped; and he halted her by seizing her arm as she was about to go up the stairs. She followed him mechanically into the drawing-room.
He closed the door behind them, and the other door into the darkened dining room. He even took a precautionary glance out of the window of the porch. And these movements, which ordinarily might have aroused her curiosity, if not her alarm, she watched with a profound indifference. He took a stand before the Japanese screen in front of the fireplace, thrust his hands in his pockets, cleared his throat, and surveyed her from her white shoulders to the gold-embroidered tips of her slippers.
“I'm leaving for the West in the morning, Honora. If you've made any arrangements for me on Sunday, you'll have to cancel them. I may be gone two weeks, I may be gone a month. I don't know.”
“Yes,” she said.
“I'm going to tell you something those fellows in the smoking room to-night did their best to screw out of me. If you say anything about it, all's up between me and Wing. The fact that he picked me out to engineer the thing, and that he's going to let me in if I push it through, is a pretty good sign that he thinks something of my business ability, eh?”
“You'd better not tell me, Howard,” she said.
“You're too clever to let it out,” he assured her; and added with a chuckle: “If it goes through, order what you like. Rent a house on Bellevue Avenue—any thing in reason.”