Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/353



T was late afternoon and at the Manoir door Graham had rung three times. The dark house, cloaked with rain, loomed above him, its walls filled with the furtive patterings of falling drops, like the running feet of mice. Behind him the wet branches of the sycamores sighed in the melancholy wind. There was no other sound; but, as he stood there, his foreboding Scotch blood alert and listening, old Médor stumbled round the corner of the house and paused, as Marthe Ludérac had paused, so long ago, and, fixing his fading eyes upon him, he lifted his nose and uttered a low howl. Hastily, angrily, at that, Graham turned the handle of the door and found it yield. The chill, high hall was before him and from the high window, above the stair, a pallid light fell down upon it.

Graham stood and looked; and listened to the stillness. He was alone as he had never been alone. Jill had not yet left him; but she had found a car and it was to take her that night to Mérinac, where she would catch the Paris train. It might be that he and Jill would never meet again. He had come to tell Marthe Ludérac that she was his wife no longer.

And as he stood in the silent house the real Marthe Ludérac seemed further from him than the Marthe of his dream.