She stood looking blankly at the door which had closed behind three men--one old and two young--and perhaps she realised the fact that such creatures may be led blindly, helplessly, with a single hair, but that that hair may snap at any moment.
She was not thinking of Guy Oscard. Him she had never loved. He had only been one of her experiments, and by his very simplicity--above all, by his uncompromising honesty--he had outwitted her.
It was characteristic of her that at that moment she scarcely knew the weight of her own remorse. It sat lightly on her shoulders then, and it was only later on, when her beauty began to fade, when years came and brought no joy for the middle-aged unmarried woman, that she began to realise what it was that she had to carry through life with her. At that moment a thousand other thoughts filled her mind--such thoughts as one would expect to find there. How was the world to be deceived? The guests would have to be put off--the wedding countermanded--the presents returned. And the world--her world--would laugh in its sleeve. There lay the sting.
Still must the man move sadlier for the dreams That mocked the boy.
“Where are you going?” asked Meredith, when they were in the street.
“May I come with you?” asked Meredith again.
“Certainly; I have a good deal to tell you.”
They called a cab, and singularly enough they drove all the way to Russell Square without speaking. These two men had worked together for many months, and men who have a daily task in common usually learn to perform it without much interchange of observation. When one man gets to know the mind of another, conversation assumes a place of secondary importance. These two had been through more incidents together than usually fall to the lot of man--each knew how the other would act and think under given circumstances; each knew what the other was thinking now.
The house in Russell Square, the quiet house in the corner where the cabs do not pass, was lighted up and astir when they reached it. The old butler held open the door with a smile of welcome and a faint aroma of whisky. The luggage had been discreetly removed. Joseph had gone to Mr. Meredith's chambers. Guy Oscard led the way to the smoking-room at the back of the house--the room wherein the eccentric Oscard had written his great history--the room in which Victor Durnovo had first suggested the Simiacine scheme to the historian's son.