He sauntered out, after a glance at the clock.  They heard his footsteps as he descended the stairs.

“Tell me, what manner of a man is your father?” Francis asked impulsively.

“I am his daughter and I do not know,” Margaret answered.  “Before he came, I was going to speak to you of a strange misunderstanding which has existed between us and which has just been removed.  Now I have a fancy to leave it until later.  You will not mind?”

“When you choose,” Francis assented.  “Nothing will make any difference.  We are past the days when fathers or even mothers count seriously in the things that exist between two people like you and me, who have felt life.  Whatever your father may be, whatever he may turn out to be, you are the woman I love—­you are the woman who is going to be my wife.”

She leaned towards him for a moment.

“You have an amazing gift,” she whispered, “of saying just the thing one loves to hear in the way that convinces.”

Dinner was served to them in the smaller of the two dining-rooms, an exquisite meal, made more wonderful still by the wine, which Hedges himself dispensed with jealous care.  The presence of servants, with its restraining influence upon conversation, was not altogether unwelcome to Francis.  He and Margaret had had so little opportunity for general conversation that to discuss other than personal subjects in this pleasant, leisurely way had its charm.  They spoke of music, of which she knew far more than he; of foreign travel, where they met on common ground, for each had only the tourist’s knowledge of Europe, and each was anxious for a more individual acquaintance with it.  She had tastes in books which delighted him, a knowledge of games which promised a common resource.  It was only whilst they were talking that he realised with a shock how young she was, how few the years that lay between her serene school-days and the tempestuous years of her married life.  Her school-days in Naples were most redolent of delightful memories.  She broke off once or twice into the language, and he listened with delight to her soft accent.  Finally the time came when dessert was set upon the table.

“I have ordered coffee up in the little sitting-room again,” she said, a little shyly.  “Do you mind, or would you rather have it here?”

“I much prefer it there,” he assured her.

They sat before an open window, looking out upon some elm trees in the boughs of which town sparrows twittered, and with a background of roofs and chimneys.  Margaret’s coffee was untasted, even her cigarette lay unlit by her side.  There was a touch of the old horror upon her face.  The fingers which he drew into his were as cold as ice.

“You must have wondered sometimes,” she began, “why I ever married Oliver Hilditch.”

“You were very young,” he reminded her, with a little shiver, “and very inexperienced.  I suppose he appealed to you in some way or another.”