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Peel-Swynnerton beat him off once more, glancing with careful, uninterested nonchalance at the gas-burners which exploded one after another with a little plop under the application of the maid's taper. The white table gleamed more whitely than ever under the flaring gas. People at the end of the room away from the window instinctively smiled, as though the sun had begun to shine.
The mistress was alone in the retreat. Peel-Swynnerton jumped up brusquely, dropping the paper with a rustle, and approached her. "Excuse me," he said deferentially. "Have any letters come for me to-night?" He knew that the arrival of letters for him was impossible, since nobody knew his address. "What name?" The question was coldly polite, and the questioner looked him full in the face.
She marvelled that a few words with a man who chanced to be named Peel-Swynnerton could have resulted in such a disaster, and drew a curious satisfaction from this fearful proof that she was so highly-strung. But even then she did not realize how profoundly she had been disturbed. "My darling Sophia " The inevitable miracle had occurred. Her suspicions concerning that Mr.
Servants don't like it!" "No," murmured Peel-Swynnerton, "I suppose not." "However, it's not often I'm late," said the man. "Can't help it sometimes. Business! Worst of these French business people is that they've no notion of time. Appointments ...! God bless my soul!" "Do you come here often?" asked Peel-Swynnerton.
The sum had at first seemed to her enormous, but she had grown accustomed to it. "I should have preferred you to see Mr. Peel-Swynnerton here," said Constance. "You could have had a room to yourselves. I do not like you going out at ten o'clock at night to a club." "Well, good night, mater," he said, getting up. "See you to- morrow. I shall take the key out of the door.
"Very," said Peel-Swynnerton, with sincerity. "I was quite " At that moment, a tall straight woman of uncertain age pushed open the principal door and stood for an instant in the doorway. Peel- Swynnerton had just time to notice that she was handsome and pale, and that her hair was black, and then she was gone again, followed by a clipped poodle that accompanied her.
But she could not dismiss it. ... She could not argue herself out of it. The apparition of Matthew Peel-Swynnerton had somehow altered the very stuff of her fibres. And surging on the outskirts of the central storm of her brain were ten thousand apprehensions about the management of the Pension. All was black, hopeless.
He was seriously handicapped in the race for sustenance, being two and a half courses behind, but he drew level with speed and then, having accomplished this, he sighed, and pointedly engaged Peel- Swynnerton with his sociable glance. "Ah!" he breathed out. "Nuisance when you come in late, sir!" Peel-Swynnerton gave a reluctant affirmative. "Doesn't only upset you! It upsets the house!
Mr. Peel-Swynnerton said he was told positively ye were a widow. That's why I never. ..." She stopped. Her face was troubled. "Of course I always passed for a widow, over there," said Sophia. "Of course," said Constance quickly. "I see. ..." "And I may be a widow," said Sophia. Constance made no remark. This was a blow. Bursley was such a particular place.
He smiled, in his worldliest manner. But the smile was a sham. A pretence to himself! A childish attempt to disguise from himself how profoundly he had been moved by a natural scene! On the night when Matthew Peel-Swynnerton spoke to Mrs. Scales, Matthew was not the only person in the Pension Frensham who failed to sleep.
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