The tutor helped to put her in, and looked inquiringly at his pupil.
"Come in too, please," said the latter; "there is room inside."
Mr Armstrong would fain have taken his seat beside Robbins on the box. He hated scenes, and tears, and tragedies of all sorts. But there was something in his pupil's voice which touched him. He took his place within, and prayed that the moments might fly till they reached Maxfield.
Scarcely a word was spoken. Once Roger hazarded a question, but it was the signal for a new outburst on his mother's part; and he wisely desisted, and leant back in his corner, silent and motionless. As for the tutor, with the front seat to himself, he nursed his knee, and gazed fixedly out of the window the whole way.
What weeks those two hours seemed! How the horses laboured, and panted, and halted! And how interminably dismal was the dull muffled crunching of the wheels through the snow!
At length a blurred light passed the window, and the tutor released his knee and put up his eye-glass.
"Here we are," said he; "that was the lodge."
Roger slowly and reluctantly sat forward, and wrapped his mother's shawl closer round her.
Raffles stood on the door-step, and in the hall beyond Mr Armstrong could see the doctor standing.
As he stepped out, the page touched him on the arm.
Whereupon the tutor quietly crept away to the seclusion of his own room.
The household of Maxfield, worn-out by the excitement of the night, slept, or rather lay in bed, till hard on midday.
The tutor, as he slowly turned on his side and caught sight of the winter sun through the frost-bespangled window, felt profoundly disinclined to rise. He shrank from the tasks that awaited him--the task of witnessing the grief of the widow and the pale looks of the orphan heir, the dismal negotiations with undertakers and clergymen and lawyers, the stupid questions of the domestics, the sickly fragrance of stephanotis in the house. Then, too, there was the awkward uncertainty as to his own future. What effect would the tragedy of last night have on that? Was it a notice to quit, or what? He should be sorry to go. He liked the place, he liked his pupil, and further, he had nowhere else to go. Altogether Mr Armstrong felt very reluctant to exchange his easy bed for the chances and changes of the waking world. Besides, lastly, the water in his bath, he could see, was frozen; and it was hopeless on a day like this to expect that Raffles would bring him sufficient hot, even to shave with.