He heard the clanging bell echo in the flagged passage; heard through the plaster walls the heavy awakening of his host, the scrape of a match, the hasty, blundering toilet; heard the big bar dropped from the front door; voices--the groom's voice, the host's voice, the aunt's voice.
Then heavy steps on the stairs and a knock at his door.
"Very sorry to disturb you, sir," came the muffled tones through the door, almost cringingly apologetic, "but could you get up, sir, just for a minute? Miss Davenant from the Hall wants a word with you--about your dawg, sir, as I understand. If you could oblige, sir--very inconvenient, I know, sir, but the Hall is very highly thought of in the village, sir."
"What on earth--?" said Mr. Basingstoke, very loudly, and got out of bed. "I'll dress and come down," he said.
He did dress, to the accompaniment of voices below--replaced, that is, the collar, tie, and boots he had taken off--and then he began to pack, his mind busy with the phrases in which he would explain that a house in which these nocturnal disturbances occurred was not fit for the sojourning of. . . . No, hang it all, that would not be fair to the landlord--he must find some other tale.
When he had kept the lady waiting as long as he thought a man might have kept her who had really a toilet to make, he went slowly down. Voices sounded in the parlor, and a slab of light from its door lay across the sanded passage.
He went in; the landlord went out, closing the door almost too discreetly.
Mr. Basingstoke and the aunt looked at each other. She was very upright and wore brown gloves and a brown, boat-shaped hat with an aggressive quill.
"Where else, madam?" said Mr. Basingstoke.
"I should like you," said the aunt, deliberately, "to be somewhere else within the next hour. I will make it worth your while."
"I think I ought to tell you," said she, "that I saw through that business of the dog. He was well trained, I admit. But I can't have my niece annoyed in this way."
"The lady must certainly not be annoyed," said Edward, with feeling.
"I came to-night to see if you were here. . . ."
"It is an unusual hour for a call," said Edward, "but I am proportionally honored."
"--to see if you were here, and, if you were, to tell you that my niece is not."