“Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Tatham, if the question was indiscreet! I hear Lord St. Serf is worse again, and not likely to last long; and there is some strange story about a lost heir.” “Good-night, Lady Wigsby,” John replied. And he added, “Confound Lord St. Serf,” under his breath, as he went down-stairs. But it was not Lord St. Serf, poor man, who had done him no harm, whom John wished to be confounded because at last, after many threatenings, he was about to be so ill-advised as to die. It was some one very different. It was the woman who for much more than twenty years had been the chief object of John Tatham’s thoughts. CHAPTER XXXVI. Things relapsed into quietness for some time after that combination which seemed to be directed against John’s peace of mind. If I said that it is not unusual for the current of events to run very quietly before a great crisis, I should not be saying anything original, since the torrent’s calmness ere it dash below has been remarked before now. But it certainly was so in this instance. John, I need scarcely say, did not present himself at Lady Mariamne’s on the afternoon at five when he was expected. He wrote a very civil note to say that he was unable to come, and still less able to give the information her ladyship required; and, to tell the truth, in his alarm lest Lady Mariamne should repeat her invasion, Mr. Tatham was guilty of concerting with his clerk, the excellent Simmons, various means of eluding such a danger. And he exercised the greatest circumspection in regard to his own invitations, and went nowhere where there was the least danger of meeting her. In this way for a few months he had kept himself safe. It may be imagined, then, how great was his annoyance when Simmons came in again, very diffident, coughing behind his hand, and taking shelter in the shaded part of the room, with the hesitating statement that a lady--who would take no denial, who looked as if she knew the chambers as well as he did, and could hardly be kept from walking straight in--was waiting to see Mr. Tatham. John sprang to his feet with words which were not benedictions. “I thought,” he said, “you ass, that you knew exactly what to say.” “But, sir,” said Simmons, “it is not the same lady--it is not at all the same lady. It is a lady who----” But here the question was summarily settled, for the door was pushed open though Simmons still held it with his hand, and a voice, which was more like the voice of Elinor Dennistoun at eighteen than that of Mrs. Compton, said quickly, “I know, John, that your door can’t be shut for me.” “Elinor!” he said, getting up from his chair. “I know,” she repeated, “that there must be some mistake--that your door could not be shut for me.”