But as he sat there, looking at Lady Lucy, he realized that it might have been better for his powers and efficacy as a counsellor if he, too, had held aloof from this house of pain.

CHAPTER XXIV

It was about ten o’clock at night.  Lankester, who had arrived from London an hour before, had said good-night to Lady Lucy and Sir James, and had slipped into Marsham’s room.  Marsham had barred his door that evening against both his mother and Sir James.  But Lankester was not excluded.

Off and on and in the intervals of his parliamentary work he had been staying at Tallyn for some days.  A letter from Lady Lucy, in reply to an inquiry, had brought him down.  Oliver had received him with few words—­indeed, with an evident distaste for words; but at the end of the first day’s visit had asked him abruptly, peremptorily even, to come again.

When he entered Marsham’s room he found the invalid asleep under the influence of morphia.  The valet, a young fellow, was noiselessly putting things straight.  Lankester noticed that he looked pale.

“A bad time?” he said, in a whisper, standing beside the carefully regulated spinal couch on which Marsham was sleeping.

“Awful, sir.  He was fair beside himself till we gave him the morphia.”

“Is there anybody sitting up?”

“No.  He’ll be quiet now for six or seven hours.  I shall be in the next room.”

The young man spoke wearily.  It was clear that the moral strain of what he had just seen had weighed upon him as much as the fatigue of the day’s attendance.

“Come!” said Lankester, looking at him.  “You want a good night.  Go to my room.  I’ll lie down there.”  He pointed to Marsham’s bedroom, now appropriated to the valet, while the master, for the sake of space and cheerfulness, had been moved into the sitting-room.  The servant hesitated, protested, and was at last persuaded, being well aware of Marsham’s liking for this queer, serviceable being.

Lankester took various directions from him, and packed him off.  Then, instead of going to the adjoining room, he chose a chair beside a shaded lamp, and said to himself that he would sleep by the fire.

Presently the huge house sank into a silence even more profound than that in which it was now steeped by day.  A cold autumn wind blew round about it.  After midnight the wind dropped, and the temperature with it.  The first severe frost laid its grip on forest and down and garden.  Silently the dahlias and the roses died, the leaves shrivelled and blackened, and a cold and glorious moon rose upon the ruins of the summer.

Lankester dozed and woke, keeping up the fire, and wrapping himself in an eider-down, with which the valet had provided him.  In the small hours he walked across the room to look at Marsham.  He was lying still and breathing heavily.  His thick fair hair, always slightly gray from the time he was thirty, had become much grayer of late; the thin handsome face was drawn and damp, the eyes cavernous, the lips bloodless.  Even in sleep his aspect showed what he had suffered.