Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/150

136 time, the embarrassment of finding himself in a house of death. But he took himself off the next morning early—bidding me good-bye only in a quiet little note."

"A quiet little note which I remember you afterwards showed me and which was a model of discretion and good taste. It seems to me," the Doctor went on, "that he doesn't violate those virtues in considering that you've given him the right to reappear."

"At the very time, and the only time, in so long a period that his young woman, as you call her, happens also to be again in the field!"

"That's a coincidence," the Doctor replied, "far too singular for Mr. Vidal to have had any forecast of it."

"You didn't then tell him?"

"I told him nothing save that you were probably just where I find you, and that, as Manning is busy with her tea-things, I would come straight out for him and announce that he's there."

Mrs. Beever's sense of complications evidently grew as she thought. "By 'there' do you mean on the doorstep?"