278 CHEATING THE GALLOWS.
had a good deal of affection for Everard, who was unmis- takably a clever man, as well as a good-looking one. The prospect seemed fair and cloudless. Nothing presaged the terrible storm that was about to break over these two lives. Nothing had ever for a moment come to vex their mutual contentment, till this Sunday afternoon. The October sky, blue and sunny, with an Indian summer sultriness, seemed an exact image of her life, with its aftermath of a happiness that had once seemed blighted.
Everard had always been so attentive, so solicitous, that she was as much surprised as chagrined to find that he had apparently forgotten the appointment. Hearing her astonished interrogation of Polly in the passage, Tom shambled from the sitting-room in his loose slippers and his blue check shirt, with his eternal clay pipe in his mouth, and informed her that Roxdal had gone out suddenly earlier in the afternoon.
" G-g-one out?" stammered poor Clara, all confused. "But he asked me to come to tea."
" Oh, you're Miss Newell, I suppose," said Tom.
"Yes, I am Miss Newell."
" He has told me a great deal about you, but I wasn't able honestly to congratulate him on his choice till now."
Clara blushed uneasily under the compliment, and under the ardour of his admiring gaze. Instinctively she distrusted the man. The very first tones of his deep bass voice gave her a peculiar shudder. And then his impoliteness in smoking that vile clay was so gratuitous.
"Oh, then you must be Mr. Peters," she said in return. " He has often spoken to me of you."
"Ah!" said Tom laughingly, " I suppose he's told you all my vices. That accounts for your not being surprised at my Sunday attire."
