But with the morning, that sober hour when the mind gleams like a sphere of marble in the sun, John Strong’s emotions had cooled discouragingly. He viewed them on rising much as a masker regards the gay clothes he had worn the night before, when wine had cozened him out of his saner self. John Strong went down to breakfast and faced Judith stolidly over the massive oak table. She saw speedily that his mood had changed, and that he was much more the father she had known of old.
Judith, with a sense of emptiness at her heart, left him alone after the meal, to his papers and his pipe. John Strong smoked vigorously, biting the amber mouth-piece, twisting his papers to and fro with the viciousness of a man irritated by his own indecision. Judith, on the watch, saw her father pass out onto the terrace with his favorite dog following at his heels. By instinct she went to the organ that stood in the great gallery above the hall, and began to play some sad, heart-searching melodies religion had drawn from the deeps of the soul. The solemn tones pealed out into the sunlight with a passion that throbbed from the woman’s heart.
John Strong stood still to listen. The lines softened somewhat on his face and a slight tremor played about the dogged mouth. Few men, be they blunt Philistines, are inert to music when the tide of trouble runs deep. John Strong leaned against the balustrading of the terrace, and felt once more the throes of tenderness that sleep had wiped from out his brain.
It was even as he pondered thus, pacing to and fro, then halting for a time as though thought claimed every red spherelet coursing in his blood, that John Strong heard the sound of wheels upon the carriage-drive beyond the garden. The sound skirted the pines and laurels and the three great cedars, and ceased before the entrance on the northern front of the Hall. John Strong, with a shadow as of displeasure upon his face, turned towards the library window that opened upon the terrace.
Then he heard voices, a woman’s and a man’s. A door closed. John Strong halted in the sun. To him from the window came a man-servant, sleek and clean-shaven, treading deferentially towards his master.
“A lady to see you, sir.”
“What name?”
“She would give no name, sir.”
“Hum.”
“I showed her into the library.”
“What sort of lady, William?”
“Young, sir; came in a cab, one of Dixon’s traps from Rilchester. Hope I did right, sir; the lady said it was important.”
“Quite right,” said John Strong, moving in the direction of the library.
Within he found a smartly dressed, brown-haired woman in a pink toque seated with constrained precision in the middle of the sofa. The perfume of Parma violets filled the room. The stranger was palpably nervous, a little hot and flurried, like a woman who had hurried to catch a train. John Strong stared at her, hat in hand, questioned her as to the reason of the favor her presence conferred upon him.
“Mr. Strong?” she asked, tentatively, smiling forcedly, rising, and sinking again into her seat.
“I am John Strong, madam—”
“I have come on a very delicate matter—”
The ex-tea-merchant took a chair and settled himself so that he could see the woman’s face.
“A delicate matter?” he repeated, scenting charity, or a hospital donation.
“Most delicate, and to me—painful, Mr. Strong. Excuse me if I seem disconnected. I want you to promise—”
She hesitated a moment, and sat staring half apologetically into the old man’s face.
“Well, madam, what am I to promise?”
“That this visit of mine shall be kept a profound secret.”
John Strong elevated his eyebrows.
“If you will first tell me your name, madam—” he suggested.
“My name?”
“I shall be better able to understand the situation.”
The lady in the pink toque drew off her gloves with nervous jerks and laid them neatly in her lap. Then she put her veil up and moistened her lips with her tongue.
“My name is Mabel Saker,” she said, with her eyes fixed on the man’s face; “probably you remember that name.”
Most certainly John Strong remembered it. The expression on his massive and determined face betrayed the unpleasant familiarity of those few syllables. He sat in silence for the moment, his gray eyes fixed on the woman before him.
“So, madam,” he said, “you desire this interview to be kept secret. Will you kindly inform me what its purpose is?”
“Does my name suggest it to you?”
“I have my suspicions.”
“And you will consider any information I may give you as privileged?”
“How privileged, madam?”
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