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Studying her for a moment, he realized the danger more acutely than ever before. The fretfulness seemed to have gone from her face, the weary lines from her mouth. She had the look of a woman who has come into the knowledge of better things. And it was Wingrave who had done this! Aynesworth for the first time frankly hated the man.
They descended the stairs together. Outside, Wingrave was leaning back in the corner of an electric brougham, reading the paper. Aynesworth put his head in at the window. "You remember Lovell, Mr. Wingrave?" he said. "We were just talking when your message came up. I've brought him down to shake hands with you."
"You've got your money. I don't owe you a cent. Now I'm going to tell you what I think of you." Wingrave rose slowly to his feet. He was as tall as the boy, long, lean, and hard. His face expressed neither anger nor excitement, but there was a slight, dangerous glitter in his deep-set eyes. "If you mean," he said, "that you are going to be impertinent, I would recommend you to change your mind."
Wingrave stood still for a moment and gazed at his hand through the darkness as though the ghosts of dead things had flitted out from the dark laurel shrubs. Then he laughed quietly to himself. "By the bye," the Marchioness asked him, "have you a Christian name?" "Sorry," Wingrave answered, "if I ever had, I've forgotten it." "Then I must call you Wingrave," she remarked.
"Perhaps not," Aynesworth answered, "but you must remember that you are a little out of touch with your fellows just now. I daresay when you were my age, you would have felt as I feel. I daresay that as the years go on, you will feel like it again." Wingrave was thoughtful for a moment. "So you think," he remarked, "that I may yet have in me the making of a sentimentalist."
His frame and bearing, and the brightness of his deep, strong eyes, still belonged to early middle age, but his face itself, worn and hardened, was the face of an elderly man. The more Aynesworth watched him, the more puzzled he felt. "I am afraid," he remarked, "that you are disappointed in this place." "Not at all," Wingrave answered. "It is typical of a class, I suppose.
Wingrave laughed, and moved towards the lights. "We have had enough of this tomfoolery," he said scornfully. "If you won't listen to reason " He never finished his sentence. He had stumbled suddenly against a soft body, he had a momentary impression of a white, vicious face, of eyes blazing with insane fury.
"Ruth," he said, "I have been talking to your husband. There are only a few words I want to say to you." "There are only three I want to hear from you," she murmured, and her eyes were pleading with him passionately all the time. "It seems to me that I have been waiting to hear them all my life. Wingrave, I am so tired and I am losing I want to leave it all!"
I can assure you that he is a most truthful and conscientious young man. I shall be able to give him a testimonial with a perfectly clear conscience." Juliet shuddered as she turned away. All the joy of life seemed to have gone from her face. "You are Mr. Wingrave the Mr. Wingrave. Oh! I can't believe it," she broke off suddenly.
"Aynesworth," he said, "if you are ready, will you get in and tell the man to drive to Cadogan Square? Good night, Mr. Lovell!" Lovell re-entered the club with a queer little smile at his lips. The brougham glided up into the Strand, and turned westwards. "We are going straight to the Barringtons'?" Aynesworth asked. "Yes," Wingrave answered.
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