Blanche and Enid had already returned, and at dusk all four sat down to dinner together with little Ninette, for whom "Aunt Enid" had brought a new doll which had given the child the greatest delight.
The meal ended, the bridge-table was set in the pretty salon adjoining, and several games were played until Sir Hugh, pleading fatigue, at last ascended to his room.
Within, he locked the door and cast himself into a chair before the big log fire to think.
That day had indeed been a strenuous one--strenuous for any man. So occupied had been his brain that he scarcely recollected any conversations with those smart debonair officers to whom Paul had introduced him.
As he sat there he closed his eyes, and before him arose visions of interviews in dingy offices in London, one of them behind Soho Square.
For a full hour he sat there immovable as a statue, reflecting, ever recalling the details of those events.
Suddenly he sprang to his feet with clenched hands.
"My God!" he cried, his teeth set and countenance pale. "My God! If anybody ever knew the truth!"
He crossed to the window, drew aside the blind, and looked out upon the moonlit plains.
Below, his daughter was still playing the piano and singing an old English ballad.
"She's happy, ah! my dear Blanche!" the old man murmured between his teeth. "But if suspicion falls upon me? Ah! if it does; then it means ruin to them both--ruin because of a dastardly action of mine!"
He returned unsteadily to his chair, and sat staring straight into the embers, his hands to his hot, fevered brow. More than once he sighed--sighed heavily, as a man when fettered and compelled to act against his better nature.
Again he heard his daughter's voice below, now singing a gay little French chanson, a song of the café chantant and of the Paris boulevards.
In a flash there recurred to him every incident of those dramatic interviews with the Mephistophelean doctor. He would at that moment have given his very soul to be free of that calm, clever, insinuating man who, while providing him with a handsome, even unlimited income, yet at the same time held him irrevocably in the hollow of his hand.
He, a brilliant British soldier with a magnificent record, honoured by his sovereign, was, after all, but a tool of that obscure doctor, the man who had come into his life to rescue him from bankruptcy and disgrace.