for the first time she looked squarely at him, her eyes meditating gravely upon his face, as she said: “If you never knew my sister before, it was good of you to come to her grave. You do not look like one of the ruthless ones.”
“No, I hope not. Thank you for saying that,” said David, with his eyes on the ground. He was shy with women. Such a girl as this filled a shrine in his presence.
“And yet, who can ever tell?” she sighed, half to herself, with a weary drop of the hand. “The world seems so hopelessly given over to I don’t know what. One would say that men were compounded of fraud and ill-will, so that one does not know whom to trust, nor even if there is any one to be trusted. You go into the flat without any motive apparently that you can give. You would never have managed it, if I had had my way!”
“Is it against your will that the flat has been let?” asked David.
“That is not your business, you know!” she said, quickly resentful of probing questions.
“I only asked,” said he, “in order to tell you that if it was against your will, you have only to breathe a wish, and I shall find the means to leave it.”
“Well, surely that is kindly said,” she answered. “Forgive me, will you, if I seem unreasonable? Perhaps you do not know what grief is. I will tell you that it is against my will that the flat has been let. My mother’s doing; she insisted because she suspected that I had a tendency to—be drawn toward the spot; she feared that I might—go there; and so it was let. But it is useless, I suppose, for you to give it up. They would only let it to some one else. And whoever was in it, I should have the same suspicions—”
That word! “Suspicions of what?” asked David. “I am so much in the dark as to what you mean! If you would explain yourself, then I might be able to help you. Will you let me help you?”
“God knows what the truth is,” she said despondently, staring downward afresh, for, when David looked at her, her eyes fell. “They are all kind enough at first, no doubt, and their kindness ends here, where the grass grows, and the winds moan all night, Gwen. I do not know who or what you are, sir,” she added, with that puzzling sharpness, “or what your motive may be; but—what have you done with my sister’s papers?”
“Papers?” said David. “You surprise me. Are there any papers of your sister’s in the flat?”
She looked keenly at him, with eyelids lowered, seeking to read his mind as though it was an open book.
“Who knows?” said she.
He recalled his harmless conversational dodge with Dibbin. He could have smiled at the thought; but he only answered: “Surely all her papers have been removed?”
“Who knows?” she said again, eying him keenly.
“Certainly, I have seen no papers!” he exclaimed.
“Well, you seem honest.”
“I hope so.”
“If you did happen to find any papers in the flat, they would not be your property, would they?”
“Of course not!”
“What would you do with them?”
“I should give them to you.”
“God grant that you are honest!” she sighed. “But how would you find me?”
“If you give me your name and address—”
“My name is Violet Mordaunt,” she said rapidly, as if venturing against some feeling of rashness. “My home is at Rigsworth in Warwickshire, near Kenilworth; but I am for the present in London, at—”
Before she could mention her London address they were both aware that a third person was with them. The light carpet of snow would not have deadened the newcomer’s approach to David’s ears, were it not that he was so absorbed in the words, the looks, the merest gestures of his companion. David heard the girl say; “Oh, Mr. Van Hupfeldt!” and a man walked past him to the grave with lifted hat. The man and Violet Mordaunt shook hands. It was now getting dark; but David could still see that the newcomer was an uncommonly handsome person, turned out with faultless elegance from his glossy beaver to the tip of his verni boots; of dark, sallow skin; and a black mustache as daintily curled as those mustaches which one sees in the costumers’ windows. David stepped back a little, and stood awkwardly. Beside this West End dandy he felt that he was somewhat of a rough-rider, and, like most young men dowered with both brain and sinew, he fancied that women incline more readily to the trimly dressed popinjay of society. Yet Violet Mordaunt seemed anything but pleased at the interruption.
“I am come to look for you by the request of your mother,” David heard the stranger say. “It was feared that you might be here, and I am to take you home, if you will do me the honor to come in my carriage.”
“But I ought not to be tracked,” said Violet, with the quick petulance which already was music for David.
“There is the question of tea and dinner,” remarked Van Hupfeldt. “If a lady will not eat, she must expect to be plagued.”
“I prefer to walk home.”
“That couldn’t be done; it is too far,” said Van Hupfeldt. “Oh, come, come!” he went on pleadingly, with a fond gaze into her eyes.
A minute afterward they left the grave together. Van Hupfeldt, as he passed David on the path, frowned momentarily; Violet slightly inclined her head.
He looked after them, and admitted to himself that they made a handsome pair, tall, like children of the gods. But three yards away after they had passed him something fell from Violet—a card—whether by accident or design David did not know; but the thought that it might be by design sent a thrill through his frame. He picked it up. It had on it the address of a boarding-house in Porchester Gardens.
He was yet tingling with the hope of meeting her again when a custodian approached. “Must shut the gates, sir,” he said.
And the clang of iron brought David back to the roadway and reality once more.
CHAPTER IV
“JOHANN STRAUSS”
On Monday morning David made the acquaintance of the genus “housekeeper,” when the woman recommended by Dibbin arrived to take him in hand. He had thought that she would sleep in the place, and had rather looked forward to the human companionship, for nothing is more cut off from the world of the living than a flat, if one is alone in it, especially through the watches of the night. Surely, if there are ghosts in want of undisturbed house-room, every bachelor’s flat must be haunted.
Mrs. Grover, the housekeeper, however, said that “sleeping in” was not the arrangement suggested to her by Dibbin, since there were “the children to be looked after.” David, for his part, would not let it appear that he cared at all; so Mrs. Grover, a busy little fat woman, set to work making things rattle, on an understanding of “sleeping out” and freedom for church services o’ Sunday.
