summoned evidently by our high-pitched
contentious voices. She had exchanged her dinner-dress for a dark
wrapper, removed her ornaments and begun to disarrange her hair, a
thick tress of which escaped from the comb. She hurried down with a
pale questioning face. Feeling distinctly that, for ourselves, immediate
departure was in the air, and divining Mr. Tottenham to be a person of
a few deep-seated instincts and of much latent energy, I seized the
opportunity to request him, sotto voce, to send a carriage to the door
without delay. "And put up our things," I added.

Our host rushed at his sister and grabbed the white wrist that escaped
from the loose sleeve of her dress. "What was in that note?" he quite
hissed at her.

Miss Searle looked first at its scattered fragments and then at her
cousin. "Did you read it?"

"No, but I thank you for it!" said Searle.

Her eyes, for an instant, communicated with his own as I think they had
never, never communicated with any other source of meaning; then she
transferred them to her brother's face, where the sense went out of
them, only to leave a dull sad patience. But there was something even
in this flat humility that seemed to him to mock him, so that he flushed
crimson with rage and spite and flung her away. "You always were an
idiot! Go to bed."

In poor Searle's face as well the gathered serenity had been by this
time all blighted and distorted and the reflected brightness of his
happy day turned to blank confusion. "Have I been dealing these three
hours with a madman?" he woefully cried.

"A madman, yes, if you will! A man mad with the love of his home and the
sense of its stability. I've held my tongue till now, but you've been
too much for me. Who the devil are you, and what and why and whence?"
the terrible little man continued. "From what paradise of fools do you
come that you fancy I shall make over to you, for the asking, a part
of my property and my life? I'm forsooth, you ridiculous person, to go
shares with you? Prove your preposterous claim! There isn't THAT in it!"
And he kicked one of the bits of paper on the floor.

Searle received this broadside gaping. Then turning away he went and
seated himself on a bench against the wall and rubbed his forehead
amazedly. I looked at my watch and listened for the wheels of our
carriage.

But his kinsman was too launched to pull himself up. "Wasn't it enough
that you should have plotted against my rights? Need you ha