Just as I entered the front room, I heard a double knock at the street-door—­a soft, fluttering, considerate little knock.  Before I could think of slipping back to the library (in which I was supposed to be waiting), the active young footman was in the hall, answering the door.  It mattered little, as I thought.  In my aunt’s state of health, visitors in general were not admitted.  To my horror and amazement, the performer of the soft little knock proved to be an exception to general rules.  Samuel’s voice below me (after apparently answering some questions which I did not hear) said, unmistakably, “Upstairs, if you please, sir.”  The next moment I heard footsteps—­a man’s footsteps—­approaching the drawing-room floor.  Who could this favoured male visitor possibly be?  Almost as soon as I asked myself the question, the answer occurred to me.  Who could it be but the doctor?

In the case of any other visitor, I should have allowed myself to be discovered in the drawing-room.  There would have been nothing out of the common in my having got tired of the library, and having gone upstairs for a change.  But my own self-respect stood in the way of my meeting the person who had insulted me by sending me back my books.  I slipped into the little third room, which I have mentioned as communicating with the back drawing-room, and dropped the curtains which closed the open doorway.  If I only waited there for a minute or two, the usual result in such cases would take place.  That is to say, the doctor would be conducted to his patient’s room.

I waited a minute or two, and more than a minute or two.  I heard the visitor walking restlessly backwards and forwards.  I also heard him talking to himself.  I even thought I recognised the voice.  Had I made a mistake?  Was it not the doctor, but somebody else?  Mr. Bruff, for instance?  No! an unerring instinct told me it was not Mr. Bruff.  Whoever he was, he was still talking to himself.  I parted the heavy curtains the least little morsel in the world, and listened.

The words I heard were, “I’ll do it to-day!” And the voice that spoke them was Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite’s.

CHAPTER V

My hand dropped from the curtain.  But don’t suppose—­oh, don’t suppose—­that the dreadful embarrassment of my situation was the uppermost idea in my mind!  So fervent still was the sisterly interest I felt in Mr. Godfrey, that I never stopped to ask myself why he was not at the concert.  No!  I thought only of the words—­the startling words—­which had just fallen from his lips.  He would do it to-day.  He had said, in a tone of terrible resolution, he would do it to-day.  What, oh what, would he do?  Something even more deplorably unworthy of him than what he had done already?  Would he apostatise from the faith?  Would he abandon us at the Mothers’-Small-Clothes?  Had we seen the last of his angelic smile in the committee-room?