"This is energetic, my niece!" Francis Markrute said, but she hardly answered him, and as soon as Turner and the footman had left the room she began at once:
"Tristram was very angry with me last night because I was out late. I had gone to obtain news of Mirko, I am very anxious about him and I could give Tristram no explanation. I ask you to relieve me from my promise not to tell him--about things."
The financier frowned. This was a most unfortunate moment to revive the family skeleton, but he was a very just man and he saw, directly, that suspicion of any sort was too serious a thing to arouse in Tristram's mind.
"Very well," he said, "tell him what you think best. He looks desperately unhappy--you both do--are you keeping him at arm's length all this time, Zara? Because if so, my child, you will lose him, I warn you. You cannot treat a man of his spirit like that; he will leave you if you do."
"I do not want to keep him at arm's length; he is there of his own will. I told you at Montfitchet everything is too late--"
Then the butler entered the room: "Some one wishes to speak to your ladyship on the telephone, immediately," he said.
And Zara forgot her usual dignity as she almost rushed across the hall to the library, to talk:--it was Mimo, of course, so her presence of mind came to her and as the butler held the door for her she said, "Call a taxi at once."
She took the receiver up, and it was, indeed, Mimo's voice--and in terrible distress.
It appeared from his almost incoherent utterances that little Agatha had teased Mirko and finally broken his violin. And that this had so excited him, in his feverish state, that it had driven him almost mad, and he had waited until all the household, including the nurse, were asleep, and, with superhuman cunning, crept from his bed and dressed himself, and had taken the money which his Chérisette had given him for an emergency that day in the Park, and which he had always kept hidden in his desk; and he had then stolen out and gone to the station--all in the night, alone, the poor, poor lamb!--and there he had waited until the Weymouth night mail had come through, and had bought a ticket, and got in, and come to London to find his father--with the broken violin wrapped in its green baize cover. And all the while coughing--coughing enough to kill him! And he had arrived with just enough money to pay a cab, and had come at about five o'clock and could hardly wake the house to be let in; and he, Mimo, had heard the noise and come down, and there found the little angel, and brought him in, and warmed him in his bed. And he had waited to boil him some hot milk before he could come to the public telephone near, to call her up. Oh! but he was very ill--very, very ill--and could she come at once--but oh!--at once!