“I wouldn’t part with it for all Mrs Waddesleigh Peagrim’s millions,” said Wally with sudden and startling vehemence, “if she offered me them.” He paused. “She hasn’t, as a matter of fact.”
There was a silence. Jill looked at Wally furtively, as he returned to his seat. She was seeing him with new eyes. It was as if this trifling incident had removed some sort of a veil. He had suddenly become more alive. For an instant she had seen right into him, to the hidden deeps of his soul. She felt shy and embarrassed.
“Pat died,” she said, at length. She felt the necessity of saying something.
“He picked up some poison, poor darling … How long ago those days seem, don’t they!”
“They are always pretty vivid to me. I wonder who has that old house of yours now.”
“I heard the other day,” said Jill more easily. The odd sensation of embarrassment was passing. “Some people called … what was the name?… Debenham, I think.”
Silence fell again. It was broken by the front-door bell, like an alarm-clock that shatters a dream.
“But he’ll get such a shock when he sees you.”
“He must look on it in the light of rent. I don’t see why I shouldn’t have a little passing amusement from this business.”
He left the room. Jill heard the front door open. She waited breathlessly. Pity for Uncle Chris struggled with the sterner feeling that it served him right.
“Hullo-ullo-ullo!” replied an exuberant voice. “Wondered if I’d find you in, and all that sort of thing. I say, what a deuce of a way up it is here. Sort of gets a chap into training for going to heaven, what? I mean, what?”
Jill looked about her like a trapped animal. It was absurd, she felt, but every nerve in her body cried out against the prospect of meeting Freddie. His very voice had opened old wounds and set them throbbing.
She listened in the doorway. Out of sight down the passage, Freddie seemed by the sounds to be removing his overcoat. She stole out and darted like a shadow down the corridor that led to Wally’s bedroom. The window of the bedroom opened onto the wide roof which Uncle Chris had eulogized. She slipped noiselessly out, closing the window behind her.
“I say, Mason, old top,” said Freddie, entering the sitting-room, “I hope you don’t mind my barging in like this but the fact is things are a bit thick. I’m dashed worried and I didn’t know another soul I could talk it over with. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t sure you were in New York at all but I remembered hearing you say in London that you went popping back almost at once, so I looked you up in the telephone book and took a chance. I’m dashed glad you _are_ back. When did you arrive?”