"My dear Lord Wolfenden," he said apologetically, "this is the worst of having country servants. Fancy showing you in here. Come and join us in the other room; we are just going to have our coffee."
Wolfenden followed him with alacrity; they crossed the little hall and entered the dining-room. Helène was still sitting there sipping her coffee in an easy chair. She welcomed him with outstretched hand and a brilliantly soft smile. Mr. Sabin, who was watching her closely, appreciated, perhaps for the first time, her rare womanly beauty, apart from its distinctly patrician qualities. There was a change, and he was not the man to be blind to it or to under-rate its significance. He felt that on the eve of victory he had another and an unexpected battle to fight; yet he held himself like a brave man and one used to reverses, for he showed no signs of dismay.
"I want you to try a glass of this claret, Lord Wolfenden," he said, "before you begin your coffee. I know that you are a judge, and I am rather proud of it. You are not going away, Helène?"
"I had no idea of going," she laughed. "This is really the only habitable room in the house, and I am not going to let Lord Wolfenden send me to shiver in what we call the drawing-room."
"I should be very sorry if you thought of such a thing," Wolfenden answered.
"If you will excuse me for a moment," Mr. Sabin said, "I will unpack some cigarettes. Helène, will you see that Lord Wolfenden has which liqueur he prefers?"
He limped away, and Helène watched him leave the room with some surprise. These were tactics which she did not understand. Was he already making up his mind that the game could be played without her? She was puzzled--a little uneasy.
She turned to find Wolfenden's admiring eyes fixed upon her; she looked at him with a smile, half-sad, half-humorous.
"Let me remember," she said, "I am to see that you have--what was it? Oh! liqueurs. We haven't much choice; you will find Kummel and Chartreuse on the sideboard, and Benedictine, which my uncle hates, by the bye, at your elbow."
"No liqueurs, thanks," he said. "I wonder, did you expect me to-night? I don't think that I ought to have come, ought I?"
"Well, you certainly show," she answered with a smile, "a remarkable disregard for all precedents and conventions. You ought to be already on your way to foreign parts with your guns and servants. It is Englishmen, is it not, who go always to the Rocky Mountains to shoot bears when their love affairs go wrong?"