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33 “Be so good, Hannah.”

In a minute Hannah returned.

“No, miss, he has not.”

“Thank you, Hannah, that will do.”

And Claire returned to the drawing-room after a truant hour, which, however, Daintree’s simultaneous absence from the dining-table explained satisfactorily enough to Lady Starkie and Mr. Harding. On her way Claire met the latter face to face in the hall. He was stark sober; indeed, his fresh face had lost colour, which was never the case in his cups.

“Seen anything of Blaydes?” he cried out to Claire, who started at the question, and then at her father’s face.

“Nothing, papa: indeed, I hear he has not come.”

“So do I. That’s just it; that’s just it!” repeated Mr. Harding, looking at his watch; and his hand was as unsteady as his voice was clear.

“I think he cannot be coming at all,” remarked Claire, innocently; and she never knew why her father turned so abruptly upon his heel; but his face was still ghastly when he rejoined his gentlemen, and the bumper of port which he tossed off left it ghastlier yet.

It was twenty minutes past ten by the ormolu clock upon the chimney-piece when Claire Harding re-entered the drawing-room.

It was twenty minutes past ten by Captain Blaydes’s gold repeater when through the window of a hackney-coach, creeping all too slowly along the Finchley Road, the Captain recognised a wayfarer who also recognised him, and thrust his iron-grey head through the opposite window to curse the coachman and bid him drive faster.