into Lady Loudwater's sitting-room, came out, and ushered him into it.

His strong sense of the fitness of things caused him to enter the room
slowly, with an air grave to solemnity. Olivia greeted him with a faint,
rather forced smile.

He thought that she was paler than usual, and lacked something of her
wonted charm. She seemed rather nervous. She thought that he had come
from her husband with an unpleasant and probably most insulting message.

He cleared his throat and said in the deep, grave voice he felt
appropriate: "I've come on a very painful errand, Lady Loudwater--a very
painful errand."

"Indeed?" she said, and looked at him with uneasy, anxious eyes.

"I'm sorry to tell you that Lord Loudwater has had an accident, a very
bad accident," he said.

"An accident? Egbert?" she cried, in a tone of surprise that sounded
genuine enough.

It gave Mr. Manley to understand that she had expected some other kind of
painful communication--doubtless about the divorce Lord Loudwater had
threatened. But he had composed a series of phrases leading up by a nice
gradation to the final announcement, and he went on: "Yes. There is very
little likelihood of his recovering from it."

Olivia looked at him queerly, hesitating. Then she said: "Do you mean
that he's going to be a cripple for life?"