His face grew grim as he detected the quiver in the faltering indecisive words, but he answered briskly.
"Of course I'll come. I'd love to," he said, with a cheeriness he was far from feeling. He hung up the receiver with a heavy sigh. But he had hardly moved when the telephone rang again sharply.
"Damn the thing!" he muttered irritably.
This time a very different voice, curt and uncompromising: "--that you, Peter?--Yes!--Doing anything tonight?--Not?--Then for God's sake come up to dinner." And then the receiver jammed down savagely.
With grimmer face Peters moved thoughtfully across the room and touched a bell in the wall by the fireplace. His call was answered with the usual promptness, and when he had given the necessary orders and the man had gone he laid aside his pipe, tidied a few papers, and went slowly to an adjoining room.
The Hermitage was properly the dower house of the Towers, but for the last two generations had not been required as such. The room Peters now entered had originally been the drawing room, but for the thirty years he had lived in the house he had kept it as a music room. Panelled in oak, with polished floor and innocent of hangings, the only furniture a grand piano and a portrait, it was at once a sanctuary and a shrine. And during those thirty years to only two people had he given the right of entrance. To the woman whose portrait hung on the wall and, latterly, to the girl who had succeeded her as mistress of Craven Towers. To this room, to the portrait and the piano, he brought all his difficulties; it was here he wrestled with the loneliness and sadness that the world had never suspected. To-night he felt that only the peace that room invariably brought would enable him to fulfil the task he had in hand.
* * * *
Craven was alone in the hall when he arrived, and it was not until the gong sounded that Gillian made a tardy appearance, very pale but with a feverish spot on either cheek. Peters' quick eye noticed the absence of the black shadow that was always at her heels. "Where is the faithful Mouston? Not in disgrace, surely--the paragon?" he teased, and was disconcerted at the painful flush that overspread her face. But she thrust her arm through his and forced a little laugh. "Mouston is becoming rather incorrigible, I'm afraid I've spoiled him hopelessly. I'll tell him you inquired, it will cheer him up, poor darling. He's doing penance with a bone upstairs. Shall we go in--I'm famished."