"Yes, Asticot. But after you’re dead such necessities won’t trouble you."
"I’ve got my eye on you. Do you know what that means?"
Stammering and stuttering, the ruffian admitted that he did know.
"Very well. They’ll bring you a tin tub full of hot water, some clothing which I bestow upon you, some salves and bandages. Afterward, they’ll give you some straw to sleep on, and then they’ll lock the door. What I’ll do with you or to you I don’t know yet. But I’ll know by morning."
Vignier knocked at the door. Behind him came a stableboy with a tub.
"Take care of that rat," said Warner briefly; and went out into the night.
His hands were slightly discolored, and one had bled at the knuckles. He went directly to the room, changed his linen, made a careful toilet with a grimace of retrospective disgust, then adjusting and brushing out his crumpled attire, took a look at himself in the glass and discovered no incriminating evidence of his recent pugilistic activity.
But when he went downstairs he discovered that the family had retired; lights flickered low in the west drawing-room, a lamp remained burning in the staircase hall, but the remainder of the house was dark.
As he stood at the drawing-room door, undecided whether to carry the hallway lamp to the library and find a book, or to return to his room and bed, a slight noise on the stairway attracted his attention.
Philippa, in boudoir robe and slippers, her chestnut hair in two braids, sat on the carpeted stairs looking down at him through the spindles.
"What on earth are you doing there?" he demanded, smiling up at her.
"You said you were going to find a wrap for me. You didn’t return."
"I’m sorry, Philippa. I was detained at the garage—a matter which had to be arranged with Vignier.... You should go back to bed."
"I wished to find out whether you had come in."
"But, Philippa," he protested laughingly, "you don’t feel that you have to sit up for me, do you?—As though we were ma——" He checked himself abruptly, and she caught him up where he had stopped.
"Yes, I do feel that way!" she said emphatically. "When the only man a girl has in the whole world goes out and doesn’t return, is it not natural for that girl to sit up until he does return?"