"Had a letter from him this afternoon," said Llwellyn, "with a demand for about fourteen thousand that I owe him now. Threatens to sell me up. But there was something which looked brighter at the end of the letter, though I couldn't quite make out what he was driving at."
"The tone of the letter changed; it had been nasty before. He said that I could do him a service for which he would not only wipe out the old debt, but for which I could get a lot more money."
"You'll go to him at once, Bob, won't you?"
"I suppose I must. There's no way out of it. I can't think, though, how I can do him any service. He's a dabbler, an amateur in my own work, but he's not going to pay a good many thousands for any help in _that_."
"Let it alone till you find out," she said, with the instinctive dislike of her class to the prolonged discussion of anything unpleasant. She got up and rang the bell for her maid and supper.
For some reason Llwellyn could eat nothing. A weight oppressed him--a presage of danger and disaster. The unspeakable mental torments that the vicious man who is highly educated undergoes--torments which assail him in the very act and article of his pleasures--have never been adequately described. "What a frail structure his honours and positions were," he thought as the woman chatted of the _coulisses_ and the blackguard news of the _demi-monde_. His indulgent life had acted on the Professor with a dire physical effect. His nerves were unstrung and he became childishly superstitious. The slightest hint of misfortune set his brain throbbing with a horrid fear. The spectre of overwhelming disaster was always waiting, and he could not exorcise it.
The two accidental and trivial facts that the knives at his place were crossed, and that he spilt the salt as he was passing it to his mistress, set him crossing himself with nervous rapidity.
The girl laughed at him, but she was interested nevertheless. For the moment they were on an intellectual level. He explained that the sign of the Cross was said to avert misfortune, and she imitated him clumsily.
Llwellyn thought nothing of it at the time, but the meaningless travesty came back afterwards when he thought over that eventful night.