Standing there before his ambiguous treasure and losing himself for the moment in the sense of a dawning complication, he was startled by a light, quick tap at the door of his sitting-room.Instinctively, before answering, he listened an instant--he was in the attitude of a miser surprised while counting his hoard.Then he answered "One moment, please!" and slipped the little heap of packets into the biggest of the drawers of the davenport, which happened to be open.
The aperture of the false back was still gaping, and he had not time to work back the spring.He hastily laid a big book over the place and then went and opened his door.
It offered him a sight none the less agreeable for being unexpected--the graceful and agitated figure of Mrs.Ryves.Her agitation was so visible that he thought at first that something dreadful had happened to her child--that she had rushed up to ask for help, to beg him to go for the doctor.Then he perceived that it was probably connected with the desperate verses he had transmitted to her a quarter of an hour before; for she had his open manuscript in one hand and was nervously pulling it about with the other.She looked frightened and pretty, and if, in invading the privacy of a fellow-lodger, she had been guilty of a departure from rigid custom, she was at least conscious of the enormity of the step and incapable of treating it with levity.The levity was for Peter Baron, who endeavoured, however, to clothe his familiarity with respect, pushing forward the seat of honour and repeating that he rejoiced in such a visit.The visitor came in, leaving the door ajar, and after a minute during which, to help her, he charged her with the purpose of telling him that he ought to be ashamed to send her down such rubbish, she recovered herself sufficiently to stammer out that his song was exactly what she had been looking for and that after reading it she had been seized with an extraordinary, irresistible impulse--that of thanking him for it in person and without delay.
"It was the impulse of a kind nature," he said, "and I can't tell you what pleasure you give me."She declined to sit down, and evidently wished to appear to have come but for a few seconds.She looked confusedly at the place in which she found herself, and when her eyes met his own they struck him as anxious and appealing.She was evidently not thinking of his song, though she said three or four times over that it was beautiful.
"Well, I only wanted you to know, and now I must go," she added; but on his hearthrug she lingered with such an odd helplessness that he felt almost sorry for her.
"Perhaps I can improve it if you find it doesn't go," said Baron.
"I'm so delighted to do anything for you I can.""There may be a word or two that might be changed," she answered, rather absently."I shall have to think it over, to live with it a little.But I like it, and that's all I wanted to say.""Charming of you.I'm not a bit busy," said Baron.
Again she looked at him with a troubled intensity, then suddenly she demanded: "Is there anything the matter with you?""The matter with me?"
"I mean like being ill or worried.I wondered if there might be; Ihad a sudden fancy; and that, I think, is really why I came up.""There isn't, indeed; I'm all right.But your sudden fancies are inspirations.""It's absurd.You must excuse me.Good-by!" said Mrs.Ryves.
"What are the words you want changed?" Baron asked.
"I don't want any--if you're all right.Good-by," his visitor repeated, fixing her eyes an instant on an object on his desk that had caught them.His own glanced in the same direction and he saw that in his hurry to shuffle away the packets found in the davenport he had overlooked one of them, which lay with its seals exposed.For an instant he felt found out, as if he had been concerned in something to be ashamed of, and it was only his quick second thought that told him how little the incident of which the packet was a sequel was an affair of Mrs.Ryves's.Her conscious eyes came back to his as if they were sounding them, and suddenly this instinct of keeping his discovery to himself was succeeded by a really startled inference that, with the rarest alertness, she had guessed something and that her guess (it seemed almost supernatural), had been her real motive.Some secret sympathy had made her vibrate--had touched her with the knowledge that he had brought something to light.After an instant he saw that she also divined the very reflection he was then ******, and this gave him a lively desire, a grateful, happy desire, to appear to have nothing to conceal.For herself, it determined her still more to put an end to her momentary visit.But before she had passed to the door he exclaimed: "All right? How can a fellow be anything else who has just had such a find?"She paused at this, still looking earnest and asking: "What have you found?""Some ancient family papers, in a secret compartment of my writing-table." And he took up the packet he had left out, holding it before her eyes."A lot of other things like that.""What are they?" murmured Mrs.Ryves.
"I haven't the least idea.They're sealed.""You haven't broken the seals?" She had come further back.
"I haven't had time; it only happened ten minutes ago.""I knew it," said Mrs.Ryves, more gaily now.
"What did you know?"