The speaker was an old gentleman, dressed in black, bald, with small and rather rugged features; his voice was pleasant.  A gold chain and a bunch of seals shone against his waistcoat, also a pair of eye-glasses.  A professional man, obviously.  Jane remembered that she had seen him once before, about a year ago, when he had talked with her for a few minutes, very kindly.

‘Will you come in here, Jane?’ her grandfather’s voice called to her.

Snowdon had changed much.  Old age was heavy upon his shoulders, and had even produced a slight tremulousness in his hands; his voice told the same story of enfeeblement.  Even more noticeable was the ageing of his countenance.  Something more, however, than the progress of time seemed to be here at work.  He looked strangely careworn; his forehead was set in lines of anxiety; his mouth expressed a nervousness of which formerly there had been no trace.  One would have said that some harassing preoccupation must have seized his mind.  His eyes were no longer merely sad and absent, but restless with fatiguing thought.  As Jane entered the room he fixed his gaze upon her—­a gaze that appeared to reveal worrying apprehension.

‘You remember Mr. Percival, Jane,’ he said.

The old gentleman thus presented held out his hand with something of fatherly geniality.

’Miss Snowdon, I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you again before long, but just now I am carrying off your grandfather for a couple of hours, and indeed we mustn’t linger that number of minutes.  You look well, I think?’

He stood and examined her intently, then cried: 

‘Come, my dear sir, come! we shall be late.’

Snowdon was already prepared for walking.  He spoke a few words to Jane, then followed Mr. Percival downstairs.

Flurried by the encounter, Jane stood looking about her.  Then came a rush of disappointment as she reflected that the visitor of Wednesday evenings would call in vain.  Hearing that her grandfather was absent, doubtless he would take his leave at once.  Or, would he—­

In a minute or two she ran downstairs to exchange a word with Mrs. Byass.  On entering the kitchen she was surprised to see Bessie sitting idly by the fire.  At this hour it was usual for Mr. Byass to have returned, and there was generally an uproar of laughing talk.  This evening, dead silence, and a noticeable something in the air which told of trouble.  The baby—­of course a new baby—­lay in a bassinette near its mother, seemingly asleep; the other child was sitting in a high chair by the table, clattering ‘bricks.’

Bessie did not even look round.

‘Is Mr. Byass late?’ inquired Jane, in an apprehensive voice.

‘He’s somewhere in the house, I believe,’ was the answer, in monotone.

‘Oh dear!’ Jane recognised a situation which had already come under her notice once or twice during the last six months She drew near, and asked in a low voice: