"Do you think there
is anything in common between my son and you, after to-night."
He dropped the locket on George Fairfax's breast with a contemptuous
gesture, as if he had been throwing away a handful of dirt. _That_ folly
had cost dearly enough.
"I'll go and fetch some one," he said. "Don't let your distraction make you
forget that the man wants all the air he can get. You had better stand away
from him."
Clarissa obeyed mechanically. She stood a little way off, staring at that
lifeless figure, while Daniel Granger went to fetch the porter. The house
was large, and at this time in the evening for the most part untenanted,
and Austin's painting-room was over the arched carriage-way. Thus it
happened that no one had heard that fall of George Fairfax's.
Mr. Granger explained briefly that the gentleman had had a fall, and was
stunned--would the porter fetch the nearest doctor? The man looked a him
rather suspiciously. The lovely lady's arrival in the gloaming; a locked
door; this middle-aged Englishman's eagerness to get into the rooms; and
now a fall and the young Englishman is disabled. The leaf out of a romance
began to assume a darker aspect. There had been murder done, perhaps, up
yonder. The porter's comprehensive vision surveyed the things that might
be--the house fallen into evil repute by reason of this crime, and bereft
of lodgers. The porter was an elderly man, and did not care to shift his
household gods.
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