Mrs. Hanbury bowed and said, "I saw my son on his return from Derbyshire yesterday and when he came back from you last night. But he had not come down when I was leaving home just now. I am a very positive, self-willed old woman, and I have to ask you as a favour to make allowances for these infirmities. I have made up my mind that the best thing for us to do is to hold a little family council, and I have grown so used to my own room I never can feel equal to discussing family matters anywhere else. I have therefore come to ask you a favour to begin with. Do humour me, please, and come with me to my place. John will be down and done breakfast by the time we get there, and we four can talk over all this wonderful story at our leisure."
There were objections and demurs to this, but Mrs. Hanbury's insistent, good-humoured determination prevailed, and the end was that the three ladies set out together on foot for Chester Square. "And now," said Mrs. Hanbury, as they walked along, "that I have tasted the delights of conquest, I mean to turn from a mild and seemingly reasonable supplicant into a rigid tyrant. Back into that dreadful Grimsby Street neither of you shall ever go again. It is quite enough to destroy one's zest for life merely to look down it!"
The protests and demurs were more vehement than before.
"We shall not argue the point now. In my capacity of tyrant, I decline to argue anything. But we shall see--we shall see."
When they reached Mrs. Hanbury's, they went straight, to her own room. She left word that she was most particularly engaged, and could see no one. On enquiring for her son, she heard with surprise that he had come down shortly after she left and gone out without leaving any message for her.
That morning John Hanbury awoke to the most unpleasant thoughts about Dora. What ought he to do in the matter? Had he not acted badly to her in not writing the next morning after the scene in the drawing-room?--the very night?
Unquestionably it would have been much better if he had written at once. But then at the time he reached home, he was in no state of mind to write to any one, and when he read his father's letter, the contents of it drove all other matters into the background, and made it seem that they could easily wait. Now he had been to Derbyshire, and knew all that was to be learned at Castleton, and had seen Mrs. Grace and Miss Grace and told them of the discovery he had made. His mother had undertaken to go see them, and for the present there was nothing to press in front of his thought of Dora.