After supper Mr. Tooting found Austen in the rotunda, and drew him mysteriously aside.

“Say, Aust, the Honourable Hilary wants to see you to-night,” he whispered.

“Did he send you with the message?” Austen demanded.

“That’s right,” said Mr. Tooting.  “I guess you know what’s up.”

Austen did not answer.  At the foot of the stairway was the tall form of Hilary Vane himself, and Austen crossed the rotunda.

“Do you want to see me, Judge?” he asked.

The Honourable Hilary faced about quickly.

“Yes, if you’ve got any spare time.”

“I’ll go to your room at half-past nine to-night, if that’s convenient.”

“All right,” said the Honourable Hilary, starting up the stairs.

Austen turned, and found Mr. Hamilton Tooting at his elbow.

CHAPTER XII

Mr. Redbrook’s party

The storm was over, and the bare trees, when the moon shone between the hurrying clouds, cast lacelike shadows on the white velvet surface of the snow as Austen forged his way up the hill to the Widow Peasley’s in keeping with his promise to Mr. Redbrook.  Across the street he paused outside the picket-fence to gaze at the yellow bars of light between the slats of the windows of the Duncan house.  It was hard to realize that she was there, within a stone’s throw of where he was to sleep; but the strange, half-startled expression in her eyes that afternoon and the smile—­which had in it a curious quality he could not analyze—­were so vivid in his consciousness as to give him pain.  The incident, as he stood there ankle-deep in the snow, seemed to him another inexplicable and uselessly cruel caprice of fate.

As he pictured her in the dining room behind Mr. Crewe’s silver and cut glass and flowers, it was undoubtedly natural that he should wonder whether she were thinking of him in the Widow Peasley’s lamp-lit cottage, and he smiled at the contrast.  After all, it was the contrast between his life and hers.  As an American of good antecedents and education, with a Western experience thrown in, social gulfs, although awkward, might be crossed in spite of opposition from ladies like the Rose of Sharon,—­who had crossed them.  Nevertheless, the life which Victoria led seemingly accentuated—­to a man standing behind a picket-fence in the snow—­the voids between.

A stamping of feet in the Widow Peasley’s vestibule awoke in him that sense of the ridiculous which was never far from the surface, and he made his way thither in mingled amusement and pain.  What happened there is of interest, but may be briefly chronicled.  Austen was surprised, on entering, to find Mrs. Peasley’s parlour filled with men; and a single glance at their faces in the lamplight assured him that they were of a type which he understood—­countrymen of that rugged New England stock to which he himself belonged, whose sons for generations had made lawyers and statesmen and soldiers for the State and nation.  Some were talking in low voices, and others sat silent on the chairs and sofa, not awkwardly or uncomfortably, but with a characteristic self-possession and repose.  Mr. Redbrook, towering in front of the stove, came forward.