“How do you do?  How late your train is.”

Maurice looked distinctly annoyed, but of course he shook hands with her.

“How are you, Mrs. Romer?  I did not expect you to be here till to-morrow.  Yes, we are late,” consulting his watch; “only twenty minutes to dress in—­I must look sharp.”

Meanwhile the stranger, Mr. Pryme, was following the butler upstairs.

Helen lowered her voice.

“I must speak to you a minute, Maurice; it is six weeks since we have met, and to meet in public would be too trying.  Please dress as quickly as ever you can; I know you can dress quickly if you choose; and wait for me here at the bottom of the stairs—­we might get just three minutes together before dinner.”

There were the footmen and the portmanteaus within six yards of them, and Mr. Pryme and the butler still within earshot.  What was Maurice to do?  He could not really listen to a whole succession of prayers, and entreaties, and piteous appeals.  There was neither the time, nor was it the place, for either discussion or remonstrance.  All he could do was to nod a hasty assent to her request.

“Then I must make haste,” he said, and ran quickly upstairs in the wake of the other guest.

The staircase at Shadonake was very wide and very handsome, and thoroughly in keeping with the spacious character of the house.  It consisted of one wide flight of shallow steps, with a richly-carved balustrade on either side of it, leading straight down from a large square landing above.  Both landing and steps were carpeted with thick velvet-pile carpet, so that no jarring footfall was ever heard upon them.  The hall into which the staircase led was paved in coloured mosaic tiles, and was half covered over with rich Persian rugs.  A great many doors, nearly all the sitting-rooms of the house, in fact, opened into it, and the blank spaces of the wall were filled in with banks of large handsome plants, palms and giant ferns, and azaleas in full bloom, which were daily rearranged by the gardeners in every available corner.

At the foot of the staircase, and with his back to it, leaning against the balustrade, stood Captain Kynaston, exactly four minutes before the dinner was announced.

Most people were in the habit of calling Maurice a good-looking man, but if anybody had seen him now for the first time it is doubtful whether they would have endorsed that favourable opinion upon his personal appearance.  A thoroughly ill-tempered expression of face seldom enhances any one’s good looks, and if ever a man looked in a bad temper, Maurice Kynaston did so at the present moment.

He stood with his hands in his trousers pockets, and his eyes fixed upon his own boots, and he looked as savage as it was well possible for a man to look.

He was waiting here for Helen, because he had told her that he would do so, and when Captain Kynaston promised anything to a lady he always kept his word.