"I have come back," she said, as she sank into a chair; "I am too tired just now to explain everything; and," turning to Mrs. Dorriman, "will somebody pay the cab, for I have no money."
There was a pause. Mr. Sandford's rage had exhausted itself, fortunately for Grace, and she sat leaning back in her chair and surveying them all with a keen look of inquiry.
"I cannot enter into everything now, but I have been to Mr. Drayton's house; he has sold it, and I have come here because I have nowhere else to go."
When Mr. Drayton returned on the day that Sir Albert had seen Margaret, he came home sorely put out. He had such a complete belief in himself that it annoyed him to find, as he did find every day, that the loss of his manager was in all ways a loss to him. Nothing seemed to prosper just now, and he was annoyed and very much harassed. Entering the little hotel where he had left Margaret, he asked if a man he had expected to call, had called.
The landlord, who was a stout, comfortable, little man, with a strong burr in his voice and a thickness, coming partly from natural guttural tendencies and partly from beer and pipes, answered in the negative, but he said that he thought the gracious lady had interviewed him in the garden.
Surprised, he went to his wife immediately and asked if this was true.
Margaret, who had resolved upon telling him that Sir Albert had been there, and who had spent much time since his departure in thinking whether she was bound to tell her husband what had passed, was taken by surprise, and a quick flush came into her usually pale face.
Like many fair and delicate-looking women she coloured vividly and the flush coloured her throat. Her husband watched her with a suspicious and angry frown, very different from the laughing, mocking one he usually showed her.
"Sir Albert Gerald passed this place accidentally," she said, "he did not know we were here. He spoke to me for a little while, then he went away."
"Indeed! and what makes you turn as red as a peony, because I found this out, eh?"
"You look so strange," she said, frightened a little by his manner.
"Do I? Do you suppose I can look pleased when I see that this man's visit has such power over your cold and indifferent nature, and that for him you tremble and blush, while for me----? Where is this man?" and he rose and went towards the door.