“Mr. Frederick Grey, I cannot permit you to be in my house. Had your uncle come, I would have received him with all courtesy; but I wish to know by what right you intrude.”
“I don’t intrude willingly,” was the answer. “I have come to see Lady Lucy Chesney.”
“You cannot see her. You shall not pass up my stairs.”
“Not see her!” echoed Frederick, staring at Mr. Carlton as though he thought he must be out of his mind. “Not see her! You don’t know what you are saying, Mr. Carlton. She is my promised wife.”
He would have borne on to the stairs; Mr. Carlton strove to impede him, and by some means the gas became extinguished; possibly the screw was touched. The servants were in the hall; hearing the altercation, they had stolen into it; Lady Laura, with her damaged foot, was limping down the stairs. The women servants shrieked at finding themselves in sudden darkness; they were perhaps predisposed to agitation from the dispute; and Lady Laura shrieked in concert, not having the faintest notion what there could possibly be to shriek at.
Altogether it was a scene of confusion. The women ran close to their master for protection, they knew not from what, and Frederick Grey, pushing everybody aside with scant courtesy, made his way to the staircase. Mr. Carlton would have prevented him, but was impeded by the servants, and at the same moment some words were whispered in a strange voice in his ear.
“Would you keep her here to poison her on her sick bed, as you did another?”
Simultaneously with this, there was some movement at the hall door: a slight bustle or sound as if somebody had either come in or gone out. It had been ajar the whole of the time, not having been closed after Frederick Grey’s entrance, for Lady Jane’s footman stood outside, waiting for orders.
Mr. Carlton—all his energy, all his opposition gone out of him—stood against the wall, wiping his ashy face. But that he had heard Frederick Grey’s footsteps echoing up the stairs beforehand, he would have concluded that the words came from him. Somebody struck a match, and Mr Carlton became conscious, in the dim light, that there was a stranger present,—a shabby-looking man who stood just within the hall. What impulse impelled the surgeon, he best knew, but he darted forward, seized, and shook him.
“Who are you, you villain?”
But Mr. Carlton’s voice was changed, and he would not have recognised it for his own. The interloper contrived to release himself, remonstrating dolefully.
“I’m blest if this is not a odd sort of reception when a man comes for his doctor! What offence have I been guilty on, sir, to be shook like this?”
It was inoffensive little Wilkes, the barber, from the neighbouring shop. Mr. Carlton gazed at him with very astonishment in the full blaze of the relighted gas. “I’m sure I beg your pardon, Wilkes! I thought it was—Who came in or went out?” demanded Mr. Carlton, looking about him in all directions.
The servants had seen no one. It was dark.
“I came along to fetch you, sir,” explained the barber, who sometimes had the honour of operating on Mr. Carlton’s chin. “My second boy’s a bit ill, and we think it may be the fever. I wasn’t for coming for you till morning, sir, but the wife made a fuss and said there were nothing like taking disorders in time; so when I shut up my shop, I come. I suppose you took me for a wild bear, a marching in without leave.”
“Did you meet anybody, or see anybody go out?” asked Mr. Carlton, leaving the suggestion of the wild bear unanswered.
“I didn’t, sir. I was going round to the surgery, when I see the hall light disappear, and heard some women scream. Naterally I come straight in at the big door; I wondered whether anybody was being murdered.”
At the foot of the stairs, standing side by side, contemplating all these proceedings with astonishment, and not understanding them, were the ladies, Jane and Laura. They asked an explanation of Mr. Carlton.
“I—I—thought I heard a stranger; I thought some one had come in. I feel sure some one did come in,” he continued, peering about him still in a curious kind of way.
“Will you step down, please sir, to the boy?”
“Yes, yes, Wilkes, I’ll be with him before bedtime,” replied Mr. Carlton. And the forgiving little barber turned away meekly, and met Mr. John Grey coming in. Frederick Grey, unimpeded, had made his way up-stairs. An open door, and a light inside, guided him to Lucy’s chamber. Ill as she was, she uttered an exclamation of remonstrance when she saw him, and covered her face with her hot hands.
“Oh, Lucy, my darling! To think that it should have attacked you!”
“Frederick! what do you do here? Where is Jane? It is not right.”
He drew away her hands to regard her face,