He would have liked to prolong the drive, in order to enjoy as long as possible the sight of her pretty face, growing prettier under the influence of the gentle feeling of self-reproach for her treatment of him; but there was work too important to be done at home for him to dally with the precious moments. On reaching Wyngham House, while Chris ran upstairs to her mother, Mr. Bradfield first informed himself of the whereabouts of the incubus, Marrable. On being informed that that gentleman had retired to his room to rest, as he generally did in the afternoon to digest a very heavy luncheon in slumber, the master of the house went upstairs, peeped in to see that his friend was really asleep, and then noiselessly locked him in, and went downstairs again. He knew that, if Gilbert Wryde’s son were really about, the young man would lose no time in making himself known to him. Then he went to his study, from the window of which, as it was in front of the house, he could keep watch. As he had expected, it was not long before the swinging of the iron gates at the entrance of the drive informed him of the approach of the visitor. John took out the key of the cellarette he kept in his study, and helped himself to a wineglass of brandy. “And now to bluff it!” said he to himself. In a few minutes a servant knocked at the door. “Come in!” cried his master. The man’s face was white, and his manner full of alarm. “There’s a gentleman who wishes to see you, sir. I showed him into the drawing-room. I think, sir, it’s--it’s Mr. Richard,” he ended, in a lower voice, as if announcing a visitor from the other world. To his astonishment, his master sprang up with an appearance of the greatest eagerness; and echoing the name as if it filled him with joy, he hastened through the hall to the drawing-room, and entered with outstretched hands. Before the west window, in the full stream of light from the declining sun, stood the man who for seventeen years had been the victim of his cruelty and greed. It is not in human nature, even in the springtime of youth, to recover in a few months from the effects of the confinement of years. Gilbert Wryde’s son showed in his prematurely grey hair, in the sharpened outlines of his face, in a certain indefinable look of weariness and waiting in his grey eyes, as well as in the deep lines about his mouth, the effects of his cruel imprisonment. He turned immediately when the door opened, and confronted John Bradfield with such a look that the latter instantly changed his intention of seizing his visitor by both hands. John felt indefinably that it would be like shaking hands with a marble statue, and he did not want any more chilling. He was sufficiently master of himself, however, to affect a boisterous delight at the meeting.