Jeovil came strolling in from the Pall Mall entrance at just about five o'clock. The Tea Room at the Carlton was quite as crowded as it always is at that hour and the music was going on—and the talk, too. Jeovil paused by the door and stood quite still, surveying the assembled company with a roving, but especially scrutinizing gaze. He was a big, heavily-built man with a face marred by dissipation and eyes that showed something might have gone right once if it had not gone wrong permanently instead.
The something that had gone wrong had gone wrong nine years previous. It had taken all the purpose out of his lordship's life and out of his walk as well. He had merely strolled since—but even strolling he was always much the observed of all observers, for he was too big to go unnoticed and too well tailored ever to be lightly forgotten after being once seen. There is something fearfully imposing about a big and well-dressed man. Jeovil was imposing.
And so, now, he had come into the Carlton for tea. Some people who knew him looked up and smiled; if he had chosen he might have joined any one of half-a-dozen little parties, but he only nodded and—after terminating his first scrutiny—began to move slowly through the middle space. One of the waiters laid his hand upon a chair-back and looked piercingly attentive, but Jeovil only shook his head. At the foot of the staircase he paused and turning, looked slowly and carefully all over the room again. Many were now directing their gaze towards him because he was so well-known and so badly talked about, but their gaze did not affect him in any noticeable degree; his big, dark, saddened eyes went from table to table all over the room once more and then he mounted the steps and began to look about him there.
There were only eight or nine small tables on the raised platform, and when his eyes had taken them all in he moved to the farther end where one of the huge palms half hid a single guest. It was a lady seated alone, with her back carefully turned to the room; a slender, girlish figure, dressed very simply, having her elbows on the mahogany and her cheeks resting on her clasped hands. Her lashes drooped so low that her eyes were perhaps shut, perhaps full of tears, but in either case they were quickly opened and quickly raised when Jeovil, coming close beside her, said in a low voice:
“Alix!”
She started, and looked straight up into his face.
“You saw him?” he said breathlessly.
“Who?”
“Sir William Codhurst.”
She pointed to the seat opposite her, dropped her face in her hands again, and made no answer. He dragged the chair up to the other side of the small mahogany circle, sank into it, leaned far towards her and said hoarsely—imperatively,
“What did he say?”
She did not reply.
There was a perfect storm of tragedy radiating between them, for this was the factor that might have set things going right for Jeovil in by-gone years, had a promise given at a death-bed not spoilt the dream. Nine years had passed since then—nine years. Nine years is a long while for life to go on separately when two people want to share it. A long—long while.
“What did he say?” the man asked again after a minute or two of waiting. “Go on, Alix, you know you must tell me.”
She put out one of her hands (they were behind one of the kindest-hearted of all the benevolently inclined Carlton palms,) and laid it on his.
“Dare,” she said (it was a nick-name of his), “he told me that I had just a month—or perhaps six weeks—to live!”
Jeovil's hand closed hard over hers. Into his eyes burst fiercely the light of will and power—a light that had been stranger there through all the hopeless past.
“I'm glad of it,” he said, “oh, I'm devilish glad of it—I don't care—do you?”
“Not for myself,” she said, still hiding her face.
“Who for?”
“I care for you. I'm afraid things will go worse than ever for you—afterwards.”
He seemed to be devouring her with his eyes; his hand pressed hers hard.
“Don't think about me; I'm going when you go.”
She looked up quickly.
“Going where?”
“Going to die.”
“Oh, don't say that!”
“But I am, little girl, just as sure as fate. I decided on that long ago.” He drew his breath through his teeth as he spoke, and his hand closed harder than ever upon hers. She kept her eyes on his. They had never even known an uninterrupted interchange of gaze in the long period. Finally he spoke, his tone almost sharp.
“Alix, do you know, what a 'special dispensation' is?”
She shook her head.
“I'm going in my car to get one now.”
“But what is it?”