when you know you've no earthly right to go near Miss Stanley—'
'You'd better mention your ideas to Mr Stanley. I don't in the least know what you're driving at—and I don't care; but since you choose to bring her name in, I shall throw over my other engagement and go to Morley's to-night.'
'You can go to the devil if you choose!' said Dick, who seemed to have entirely lost his self-control, and he flung out, slamming the door behind him.
Clare's note was bearing more fruit than she desired or anticipated in setting the brothers not so much against Litvinoff as against each other, for what but her letter could have stirred Dick's temper to this sudden and unpremeditated outbreak? What but her note and Dick's comments thereon could have ruffled Roland's ordinarily even nature in this way? It is always a mistake to play with fire; but people, girls especially, will not believe this until they have burned their own fingers, and, en passant, more of other people's valuables than they can ever estimate.
'I wish I had spoken to that girl yesterday,' said Count Litvinoff to himself; 'it would have saved my turning out this vile afternoon. If fate has given England freedom, she has taken care to accompany the gift with a fair share of fog. I wish I could help worrying about other people's troubles. It is very absurd, but I can't get on with my work for thinking of that poor tired little face. Hard up, she looked, too. Ah, well! so shall I be very soon, unless something very unexpected turns up. I'll go now, and earn an easy conscience for this evening.'
He threw down his pen and rose. The article on the Ethics of Revolution on which he was engaged had made but small progress that afternoon. He had felt ever since lunch that go out he must sooner or later, and the prospect was dispiriting. He glanced out of his window as he put on his fur-lined coat. From the windows of Morley's Hotel the view on a fine day is about as cheerful as any that London can present—though one may have one's private sentiments respecting the pepper-boxes which emphasise the bald ugliness of the National Gallery, and though one may sometimes wish that the slave of the lamp would bring St George's Hall from Liverpool and drop it on that splendid site. But this was not a fine day. It was a gloomy, damp, foggy, depressing, suicidal day. The fog had, with its usual adroitness, managed to hide the beauties of everything, and to magnify the uglinesses. Nelson was absolutely invisible, and the lions looked like half-drowned cats. Litvinoff shuddered as he lighted a large cigar and pulled his gloves on.
'This is a detestable climate,' he said, as he drew the first whiffs; 'but London is about the only place I know where good cigars can be had at a price to fit the pocket of an exile. I suppose I shall soon have to leave this palatial residence, and become one of the out-at-elbows gentlemen who make life hideous in Leicester Square and Soho.'
Like many men who have lived lonely lives, Michael Litvinoff had an inveterate habit of soliloquy. It had been strengthened by his life at the ancestral mansion on the Litvinoff estate, and had not grown less in his years of solitary wanderings.
His walk to-day was not a pleasant one, and more than once he felt inclined to turn back. But he persevered, and when he reached the house which he had seen her enter he asked a woman on the ground floor if Miss Hatfield lived there.
'There's a young person named Hatfield in the front attic,' was the reply, as the informant stared with all her eyes at the Count, who was certainly an unusual sort of apparition in Spray's Buildings.
As he strode up the dirty, rotten stairs, stumbling more than once, he thought to himself, as Dick had done, that Alice did not make her new life profitable, whatever it was.
'Poor girl!' he thought; 'if she's of the same mind now as she was when I saw her last, I suppose I must find an opportunity of doing good by stealth.'
The house, though poor enough, did not seem to be one of those overcrowded dens of which we have heard so much lately, and which a Royal Commission is to set right, as a Royal Commission always does set everything right. Or perhaps the lodgers were birds of prey, who only came home to roost at uncertain hours; or beasts of burden, who were only stabled at midnight to be harnessed again at sunrise. At anyrate, the Count saw no one on the stairs, and he saw no one in the front attic either. Not only no one, but no thing. The door and window were both open. The room appeared to have been swept and garnished, but was absolutely empty of everything but fog. There was another door opposite, but it was closed and locked.
'She's evidently not here. We'll try lower down.' But before he had time to turn he heard a foot on the stairs, coming up with the light and springy tread which is the result of good and well-fitting boots, and which does not mark those who walk through life, from the cradle to the grave, shod in boots several sizes too large and several pounds too heavy.
He glanced over the broken banisters, and recoiled hastily.
'The gentle Roland, by all that's mysterious!' he said, 'Now, what on earth can he want here? At anyrate, he'd better not see me.'
The landing on which he stood was very dark, and there was a heap of lumber, old boxes, a hopelessly broken chair, a tub, and some boards. Litvinoff crept behind them, and in his black coat and the obscurity of the dusky landing and the dark afternoon he felt himself secure. He had hardly taken up this position when Roland Ferrier's head appeared above the top stair, to be followed cautiously by the rest of him. He cast a puzzled look round the empty attic, tried the closed door, and, turning, went downstairs again.
Litvinoff was just coming out of his not over savoury lurking-place when he heard a voice on the landing below, which was not Roland's.
'Parbleu!' he said to himself; 'it rains Ferriers here this afternoon. Here's the engaging Richard, and evidently not in the best of tempers.'
He evidently was not—if one might judge by his voice, which was icy with contempt as he said sneeringly, 'So this was the engagement you were going to put off, was it?'
'Yes, it was. At least I am here to put off an engagement; but I don't know what you know about it,' said Roland, 'and I don't know what you mean by following me about like this. What business have you here? This isn't Aspinshaw, that you need dog my footsteps.'
'I came here to try and find out whether my father's son was a scoundrel or not, and you've answered the question for me by being here.'
'Upon my word,' said Roland's voice, 'I think you must be out of your mind.'
It isn't often that the thought which would restrain comes into one's mind at the moment when restraint is most needed; but just then Dick did think of his father and his dying wishes, and the remembrance helped him to speak more calmly than he would otherwise have done.
'Once for all, then, will you tell me why you are here, Roland?'
'Yes, I will, though I don't acknowledge your right to question me. I had an appointment, with that Frenchman we met last night, for this evening, but I've lost his address. I knew it was in this court, and I was walking about on the chance of finding him, when I'm almost sure I saw Litvinoff come in here. I made after him, feeling sure he was going to the same place as I was.'
'And where is Litvinoff?'
'He seems to have disappeared, or else I was mistaken. Now, what have you got to say?'
'This. You lie!'
It sounded hardly like Richard's voice, so hoarse and choked with passion was it; and so full of insult and scorn that Roland at last lost control of himself.
'Stand back, you raving maniac,' he said, 'and let me pass! The same roof mustn't cover us two any longer, and don't speak again to me this side of the grave.'
The listener, leaning forward eagerly to catch every word, heard Roland's foot dash down the staircase. There was a moment of perfect silence, and then came a long-drawn sigh from Richard Ferrier.
'Now then, young man, what's all this to-do about? I should like to know what you mean by quarrelling in places that don't belong to you, and terrifying respectable married women out of their seven senses.' It was a shrill woman's voice that spoke, and a door opened on the landing where young Ferrier stood.
'I'm very sorry, madam,' said Richard, in tones calm enough now. 'I didn't intend to disturb anyone. Will you kindly tell me if anyone lives here named Hatfield?'
'There