Celia ate her dinner and returned to the library, where she worked for a
couple of hours to make up for the time she had lost in the afternoon;
then she took up an exquisitely-bound copy of Spenser's "Faerie Queene"
and settled herself in a chair for half an hour's quiet reading. But the
great masterpiece could not hold her attention; she let it lie on her
lap and thought of her adventures of the day; she tried not to dwell on
Susie's tragedy, though it was difficult not to do so; and presently her
mind reverted to Brown's Buildings, to Mr. Clendon and the young man she
had rescued. And yet "rescued," she thought, with a sigh, was scarcely
the word, for, unwittingly, she had made him a fugitive and an outcast.
The great house was quiet, and, relying on Mrs. Dexter's assurance that
she ran no risk of intruding upon the Marquess, she turned out the
lights and went into the hall. On the threshold she drew back, with a
little flutter of excitement, for in the dim light of the great fire,
which was always burning, she saw a tall, thin figure in evening dress
standing with its hands clasped behind it. It was the Marquess. She saw
distinctly the pale, worn face, the thin, almost colourless lips, drawn
into a line that indicated profound sadness and a deep anxiety. He was
standing before the portrait of the lad, his elder brother, of whose
history Mrs. Dexter had told her; the elder brother who, if he had not
died, "in foreign parts," would have been the Marquess instead of the
man who was gazing at the portrait.
Celia stood quite still, her eyes chained to the haggard face; she did
not know whether to withdraw into the library or to pass softly behind
him and reach the stairs; and while she was hesitating, the Marquess
heaved a deep sigh, made a gesture as of a man beaten by some insoluble
problem, and, turning, saw her.
He did not start--men of his class are taught to repress every sign of
emotion--and he stood quite still, looking at her gravely, as if the
sudden interruption of his train of absorbing thought had caused him to
forget whom she might be; then, as if he had remembered, he came towards
her and said: "You are Miss Grant, the librarian, I suppose?"
Even as she answered, "Yes, my lord," Celia noted the dull, toneless
melancholy of his voice, the voice of a man to whom all things save one,
whatever that might be, are but trivial and of no consequence.