Sir Everard, leaning on Vallance\'s arm, came down to dinner in due course, looking, Burgo thought, even more frail and feeble in his dress clothes than in the morning suit he had worn earlier in the day. His appetite was of the poorest, and it was evidently more by way of keeping the others company than for anything he partook of himself that he sat down at table. Greatly to the relief of Burgo, who began to fear that he might be condemned, later in the evening, to a tête-à-tête with Lady Clinton (who, not improbably, was beset by a similar fear), the party was made up at the last moment to a quartette in the person of Signora Dusanti, the widow of a well-known musical conductor. The signora, who herself was no mean musician, and had been a popular teacher before her marriage, was now a middle-aged, plain-featured woman, but with an expression of amiability and good sense which at once impressed Mr. Brabazon in her favour. It appeared that she and Lady Clinton had known each other in years gone by, and that the signora had come to stay for a couple of days in Great Mornington Street previously to her final departure for Italy.
After dinner it was a matter of course that there should be music in the drawing-room; indeed, the evening was given up to it, her ladyship being evidently bent on utilising her friend\'s talents to the utmost while the opportunity of doing so was afforded her. It may here be remarked that, while merely a third-rate but facile executant, Lady Clinton had a cultivated voice, and sang with taste and brio. It was the only accomplishment for which she cared, or professed to care.
At ten o\'clock Sir Everard retired. As he told his nephew with a smile, he had not sat up till so late an hour he hardly knew when. It had already been proposed by the baronet, and assented to by Lady Clinton in the most amiable manner possible, that, so long as Burgo should remain in Great Mornington Street, or so long as the necessity should continue, he should take on himself the task of watching by his uncle during the night, which her ladyship had heretofore refused to delegate to anybody. It was not that there was any occasion to sit and watch by Sir Everard\'s bedside throughout the night; he was not so ill as to necessitate any such service; it was merely that Dr. Hoskins considered it essential that his medicine should be administered to him at certain stated hours, provided he were not asleep at the time, in which case the dose must be given him as soon as he should have awakened of his own accord. Lady Clinton smilingly admitted to Burgo that the duty had at length become so automatic to her that she could sleep "like a top" between whiles, and yet always wake up within five minutes of the time her services were required.
Mr. Brabazon having bidden good-night to Lady Clinton and the signora (her ladyship had made it a special request that he should not wait up on their account), was introduced by Vallance to his new quarters. The baronet\'s bedroom was a spacious apartment with three doors, the first opening into the corridor, the second into a commodious dressing-room, and the third giving access to Lady Clinton\'s apartments. In the bedroom was a couch, and in the dressing-room a chair bedstead, Burgo having the choice of either, on which to take such rest as he might feel inclined for. On an occasional table near Sir Everard\'s bed were placed his medicines, a carafe of water, and a small decanter of brandy, together with sundry glasses of different shapes and sizes. Should he be awake at those times, his medicine was to be given him at one, four, and seven o\'clock respectively. A night-light burnt on the chimney-piece, making the room a home for grotesque shadows, and imparting to the features of the sleeping man the waxen wanness of those of a corpse. Indeed, so startled was Burgo when his eyes first rested on his uncle\'s face that he bent over him and listened for his breathing before he could satisfy himself that he was really alive.
The dressing-room, which also had a door opening into the corridor, was lighted with gas, and Burgo noted with satisfaction the presence of a big easy-chair which seemed made on purpose to lounge in and read novels. The nights were too warm for there to be any need for a fire. In the course of the evening he had sent to his lodgings for his dressing-case and a portmanteau of linen and clothes, and having selected two or three volumes from the library before coming upstairs, as soon as he could get rid of Vallance, he proceeded to settle himself for the night. He had discarded his boots for a pair of canvas shoes, and had put on an old shooting-coat, and in place of a stiff collar had swathed his throat with a soft shawl. By this it was a quarter-past eleven, so that he had still nearly two hours to wait before it would be time for Sir Everard to take his first draught. After satisfying himself that his uncle still slept, he turned up the gas in the dressing-room, and settled himself with a book in the easy-chair. But he found it impossible to read. So many strange things had happened to him in the course of the day that he could not help going over them again one by one with the object of arranging them more coherently in his mind than he had yet found an opportunity of doing. He was still engaged thus when he became aware of a low tapping at the door which gave access to the corridor. He crossed to it on tiptoe, opened it, and found himself face to face with Lady Clinton. She was no longer resplendent in heliotrope velvet, with necklace and tiara of diamonds and pearls, but swathed in an ample pale blue peignoir of soft Indian silk, trimmed with swansdown, and it would have puzzled Burgo to decide in which of the two she looked the more ravissante. In either case she was what he termed her to himself--"a splendid creature."
"I hope I have not disturbed you," she whispered. "I tried to tap as gently as possible, and if you had not heard me I should at once have gone back to my room. I thought I should like to satisfy myself before finally retiring that dear Sir Everard is likely to have a good night, for you must know, Mr. Brabazon, that there are nights when he is very restless, and tosses and turns for hours together." All this was spoken in a low and rapid whisper.
"I am happy to inform you, madam, that my uncle is still sleeping soundly, as he was at the time Vallance left him in my charge," replied Burgo in a voice little raised above her own.
"In that case I am satisfied. I leave him in your hands with every confidence. And so, for the second time, buona notte. It would be absurd to wish you pleasant dreams, because I understand that you propose to yourself to keep awake throughout the night."
"That is certainly my intention."
"You shall tell me in the morning whether Morpheus did not succeed in taking you unawares, as he has a trick of doing with all of us. Vallance has instructions to relieve you at seven o\'clock." And with a smile and a nod she was gone.
His thoughts turned persistently to Lady Clinton, to the exclusion of everything else, after she was gone. Her manner of receiving him, her smiling cordiality, her instant acquiescence in everything proposed by her husband, had evidently been as great a surprise to the latter--possibly a greater--as it had been to him. No simple maiden in her teens could have been more seemingly candid and ingenuous than was this woman of three husbands. But was she not overdoing it somewhat? Did not her very persistence in posing as a woman who had no will of her own, as one to whom her husband\'s whims were law, lay her open to suspicions which might never have germinated had she not accepted what to her, metaphorically speaking, could seem nothing less than a slap on the face, with the manner of one wholly unconscious that she had received a slight at her husband\'s hands? Was it not a little "too thin," Burgo asked himself? He felt, in his own despite, that to a certain extent she fascinated him, and now that he had seen more of her, seen her in one of her more gracious and captivating moods, he no longer wondered greatly that his uncle should have succumbed to her witcheries. It seemed to him that very few men whom she might deliberately set herself to captivate would be able to hold out against her in the long run, even although they might have been prejudiced against her in the beginning. If he credited himself with being one of the few on whom her fascinations would have been wasted, it merely goes to prove that he had not yet gauged the extent of his own fallibility where a charming and determined woman was concerned. Just then he felt a little bitter against the sex, and was inclined to believe that the experience he had lately gone through would serve him as armour of proof against their sorceries for all time to come.
And yet, while admitting to the full Lady Clinton\'s powers of fascination, he told himself, almost in the next breath, that there was an indefinable something about her which had for him a certain repellent force. Nor did he fail to call to mind that on the first occasion of his seeing her there was an expression in her eyes which at once served to warn him against her. The same expression had struck him unpleasantly again to-day, only to-day it was far less markedly observable than before. It was as though it had been temporarily veiled with a shining film of amiability and smiling good humour, which, however, could not wholly hide a sinister something which lay darkling below.
Now that he was no longer under the influence of her ladyship\'s presence, now that he could harden himself against her by calling to mind all that he had lost and gone through as the result of her machinations against him, and when his uncle\'s ominous words recurred to him: "Sometimes--God help me!--I fear for my life," he felt it impossible to come to any other conclusion than that her ladyship was a very dangerous woman, and that he would be a fool to allow himself for one moment to be hoodwinked by her. Judging from what had gone before, it seemed clear that the chief object she had in view was to create an irreparable breach between himself and his uncle, and if for the moment, and that only by a pure accident, her scheme had been foiled, it would be nothing less than fatuous to imagine she had therefore given it up. "The more she smiles, and the more amiable she looks, the more she is to be feared," was Burgo\'s final summing-up of the affair.
One o\'clock came almost before he was aware of it. So far the time had passed swiftly, and yet he had not read a page. He got up and passed lightly into the other room. He had done so twice before, each time to find his uncle still sleeping as calmly as a little child. Nor was he yet awake. But while Burgo was still standing by his bedside, looking down upon him and saying to himself: "Is this mysterious illness, this sudden break-up of his constitution, due to natural causes, or is there a hidden hand at the bottom of it?" Sir Everard opened his eyes.
For a moment or two he stared up at Burgo as he might have done at a stranger; then there came a flash of recognition. "You! my boy," he exclaimed. "I\'ve been dreaming about you. So glad!--so glad!" Then he held out both his bands. "Help me to sit up," he added.
No sooner had he been helped into a sitting position than he began to cast apprehensive glances, first on one side of the bed, and then on the other. "You are sure she is not in the room?" he whispered.
"Who--her ladyship?" Sir Everard nodded. "............