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By the time he had determined to achieve both the impossibilities which formed his dilemma had decided to write to Miss Hernshaw and call upon her, and leave his letter in the event of failing to find her his problem was as far solved as it might be, by the arrival of a note from Miss Hernshaw herself, hoping that he would come to see her on business of pressing importance.
Sir George Neville, after in vain opposing this, rode off straight from the Bench to Hernshaw, and in feeling terms conveyed the bad news to Mrs. Gaunt; and then, with the utmost delicacy, let her know that some suspicion rested upon herself, which she would do well to meet with the bold front of innocence. "What suspicion, pray?" said Mrs. Gaunt, haughtily.
With the precipitation which characterized all her actions, Miss Hernshaw rose from the chair in which she had been provisionally sitting, pushed an electric button in the wall, swirled away to the other side of the room, unlocked the door behind which those sounds had subsided, and flinging it open, said, "You can come out, Mrs. Hock; I've rung for breakfast." Mrs.
I wouldn't try to make it out a fraud myself." "I'm afraid that's what I've really done," said Hewson. "But before people I've put up a bluff of despising it." "Oh, yes, I understand that," said Hernshaw. "A man thinks that if he can have an experience like that he must be something out of the common, and if he can despise it " "You've hit my case exactly," said Hewson, and the two men laughed.
There was a consensus of opinion, among those who offered any sort of comment, that he ought to give it to the Psychical Research, and at the bottom of Hewson's heart, there was a dread that the spiritualists would somehow get hold of him. This remained to stay him, when the shame of breaking faith with Miss Hernshaw and with Mystery no longer restrained him from exploiting the fact.
"You!" said his vis-a-vis, arching her eyebrows; and others up and down the table, looked round or over at Hewson where he sat midway of it with Miss Hernshaw drooping beside him. She alone seemed indifferent to his pretension; she seemed even insensible of it, as she broke off little corners of her ice with her fork.
Rock got him into a corner, and cozily began, "I always feel like explaining Rosalie a little," and then her vague, friendly eye wandered toward Miss Hernshaw across the room, and stopped, as if waiting for the girl to look away. But Miss Hernshaw did not look away, and that afternoon, Hewson's week being up, he left St. Johnswort before dinner.
He did not get on very well, not because there were not enough amusing people beside him and over against him, but because he was all the time trying to eavesdrop what was saying between Miss Hernshaw and the man on her right.
Rock, who was satisfied, or seemed so, to know that Miss Hernshaw had got at the worst. She led the talk to other things, like the comparative comforts and discomforts of the line to Genoa and the line to Liverpool; and Hewson met her upon these polite topics with an apparent fulness of interest that would have deceived a much more attentive listener.
"I want you," said Miss Hernshaw, with an effect of giving him another trial, "to say to acknowledge that you were terribly annoyed by that interview." "If you will excuse me from attaching the slightest blame to you for it, I will acknowledge that I was annoyed." Miss Hernshaw drew a deep breath as of relief. "I will arrange about the blame," she said loftily.
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