"Yes."
"There's no such person here."
It was Mountjoy's turn to be puzzled. "Is this Mr. Vimpany's house?" he
said.
"Yes, to be sure it is."
"And yet Mrs. Vimpany doesn't live here?"
"No Mrs. Vimpany has darkened these doors," the girl declared
positively.
"Are you sure you are not making a mistake?"
"Quite sure. I have been in the doctor's service since he first took
the house."
Determined to solve the mystery, if it could be done, Mountjoy asked if
he could see the doctor. No: Mr. Vimpany had gone out.
"There's a young person comes to us," the servant continued. "I wonder
whether you mean her, when you ask for Mrs. Vimpany? The name she
gives is Henley."
"Is Miss Henley here, now?"
"You can't see her--she's engaged."
She was not engaged with Mrs. Vimpany, for no such person was known in
the house. She was not engaged with the doctor, for the doctor had gone
out. Mountjoy looked at the hat-stand in the passage, and discovered a
man's hat and a man's greatcoat. To whom did they belong? Certainly not
to Mr. Vimpany, who had gone out. Repellent as it was, Mr. Henley's
idea that the explanation of his daughter's conduct was to be found in
the renewed influence over her of the Irish lord, now presented itself
to Hugh's mind under a new point of view. He tried in vain to resist
the impression that had been produced on him. A sense of injury, which
he was unable to justify to himself, took possession of him. Come what
might of it, he determined to set at rest the doubts of which he was
ashamed, by communicating with Iris. His card-case proved to be empty
when he opened it; but there were letters in his pocket, addressed to
him at his hotel in London. Removing the envelope from one of these, he
handed it to the servant: "Take that to Miss Henley, and ask when I can
see her."
The girl left him in the passage, and went upstairs to the
drawing-room.
In the flimsily-built little house, he could hear the heavy step of a
man, crossing the room above, and then the resonant tones of a man's
voice raised as if in anger. Had she given him already the right to be
angry with her? He thought of the time, when the betrayal of Lord
Harry's vindictive purpose in leaving England had frightened her--when
he had set aside his own sense of what was due to him, for her
sake--and had helped her to communicate, by letter, with the man whose
fatal ascendency over Iris had saddened his life. Was what he heard,
now, the return that he had deserved?