don't care. Nothing matters to me but one thing. Now that you know
what that is, I hope you're satisfied."

It was no way to speak to one's host. Yet I felt that he had pressed
me unduly. I hated myself for my final confidence, and his want of
sympathy made me hate him too. In my weakness, however, I was the
natural prey of violent extremes. His hand flew out to me. He was
about to speak. A moment more and I had doubtless forgiven him. But
another sound came instead and made the pair of us start and stare.
It was the soft shutting of some upstairs door.

"I thought we had the house to ourselves?" cried I, my miserable
nerves on edge in an instant.

"So did I," he answered, very pale. "My servants must have come
back. By the Lord Harry, they shall hear of this!"

He sprang to a door, I heard his feet clattering up some stone
stairs, and in a trice he was running along the gallery overhead;
in another I heard him railing behind some upper door that he had
flung open and banged behind him; then his voice dropped, and
finally died away. I was left some minutes in the oppressively
silent hall, shaken, startled, ashamed of my garrulity, aching
to get away. When he returned it was by another of the many closed
doors, and he found me awaiting him, hat in hand. He was wearing
his happiest look until he saw my hat.

"Not going?" he cried. "My dear Cole, I can't apologize sufficiently
for my abrupt desertion of you, much less for the cause. It was my
man, just come in from the show, and gone up the back way. I accused