The party round the dinner-table was thus a very agitated one, and by degrees less and less was said. The movements of the servants--Mrs. Lennox’s agile courier and John Trevanion’s solemn English attendant, whose face was like wood--became very audible, the chief action of the scene. To Everard the silence, broken only by these sounds and by Mrs. Lennox’s voice coming in at intervals, was as the silence of fate. He made exertions which were really stupendous to find something to say, to seize the occasion and somehow divert the catastrophe which, though he did not know what it would be, he felt to be hanging over his head; but his throat was dry and his lips parched, notwithstanding the wine which he swallowed in his agitation, and not a word would come. When the ladies rose to leave the table, he felt that the catastrophe was very near. He was paralyzed by their sudden movement, which he had not calculated upon, and had not even presence of mind to open the door for them as he ought to have done, but stood gazing with his mouth open and his napkin in his hand, to find himself alone and face to face with John Trevanion. He had not thought of this terrible ordeal. In the hotel life to which he had of late been accustomed, the awful interval after dinner is necessarily omitted, and Everard had not been brought up in a society which sits over its wine. When he saw John Trevanion bearing down upon him with his glass of wine in his hand, to take Mrs. Lennox’s place, he felt that he did not know to what trial this might be preliminary, and turned towards his host with a sense of danger and terror which nothing in the circumstances seemed to justify, restraining with an effort the gasp in his throat. John began, innocently enough, by some remark about the wine. It was very tolerable wine, better than might have been expected in a country overrun by visitors. “But I suppose the strangers will be going very soon, as I hear the season is nearly over. Have you been long here?” “A month--six weeks I mean--since early in August.” “And did you come for the ‘cure’? You must have taken a double allowance.” “It was not exactly for the cure; at least I have stayed on--for other reasons.” “Pardon me if I seem inquisitive,” said John Trevanion. “It was you, was it not, whom I met in the village at Highcourt two years ago?” “Yes, it was I.” “That was a very unlikely place to meet; more unlikely than Aix. I must ask your pardon again, Mr. Everard; you will allow that when I find you here, almost a member of my sister’s family, I have a right to inquire. Do you know that there were very unpleasant visitors at Highcourt in search of you after you were gone?”