Miss Denham saw him start slightly as the earl stepped forth and, bowing to him, said:  ‘I thank you, sir, for permitting me to visit my nephew.’

Dr. Shrapnel made a motion of the hand, to signify freedom of access to his house.  He would have spoken the effort fetched a burst of terrible chuckles.  He covered his face.

Lord Romfrey descended.  The silly old wretch had disturbed his equanimity as a composer of fiction for the comfort and sustainment of his wife:  and no sooner had he the front door in view than the calculation of the three strides requisite to carry him out of the house plucked at his legs, much as young people are affected by a dancing measure; for he had, without deigning to think of matters disagreeable to him in doing so, performed the duty imposed upon him by his wife, and now it behoved him to ward off the coming blow from that double life at Romfrey Castle.

He was arrested in his hasty passage by Cecilia Halkett.

She handed him a telegraphic message:  Rosamund requested him to stay two days in Bevisham.  She said additionally:  ’Perfectly well.  Shall fear to see you returning yet.  Have sent to Tourdestelle.  All his friends.  Ni espoir, ni crainte, mais point de deceptions.  Lumiere.  Ce sont les tenebres qui tuent.’

Her nimble wits had spied him on the road he was choosing, and outrun him.

He resigned himself to wait a couple of days at Bevisham.  Cecilia begged him to accept a bed at Mount Laurels.  He declined, and asked her:  ’How is it you are here?’

‘I called here,’ said she, compressing her eyelids in anguish at a wilder cry of the voice overhead, and forgetting to state why she had called at the house and what services she had undertaken.  A heap of letters in her handwriting explained the nature of her task.

Lord Romfrey asked her where the colonel was.

’He drives me down in the morning and back at night, but they will give me a bed or a sofa here to-night—­I can’t . . .’  Cecilia stretched her hand out, blinded, to the earl.

He squeezed her hand.

’These letters take away my strength:  crying is quite useless, I know that,’ said she, glancing at a pile of letters that she had partly replied to.  ’Some are from people who can hardly write.  There were people who distrusted him!  Some are from people who abused him and maltreated him.  See those poor creatures out in the rain!’

Lord Romfrey looked through the venetian blinds of the parlour window.

‘It’s as good as a play to them,’ he remarked.

Cecilia lit a candle and applied a stick of black wax to the flame, saying:  ’Envelopes have fallen short.  These letters will frighten the receivers.  I cannot help it.’

‘I will bring letter paper and envelopes in the afternoon,’ said Lord Romfrey.  ‘Don’t use black wax, my dear.’

’I can find no other:  I do not like to trouble Miss Denham.  Letter paper has to be sealed.  These letters must go by the afternoon post:  I do not like to rob the poor anxious people of a little hope while he lives.  Let me have note paper and envelopes quickly:  not black-edged.’