Mrs. Maldon raised her enfeebled, shaking hand.

“Louis!” she entreated.  His troubled, ingenuous face seemed to torture her.

“I know it’s a shame to bother you, auntie.  But what was I to do?  He’s coming up here.  I only want to tell you I’ve not got your money.  I’ve not stolen it.  I’m absolutely innocent—­absolutely.  And I’ll swear it on anything you like.”  His voice almost broke under the strain of its own earnestness.  His plaintive eyes invoked justice and protection.  Who could have doubted that he was sincere in this passionate, wistful protestation of innocence?

“Louis!” Mrs. Maldon entreated again, committing herself to naught, taking no side, but finding shelter beneath the enigmatic, appealing repetition of his name.  It was the final triumph of age over crude youth.  “Louis!”

IV

Rachel stood expectant and watchful in the kitchen.  She was now filled with dread.  She wanted to go up and waken Mrs. Tams, but was too proud.  The thought had come into her mind:  “His coming like this has something to do with the money.  Perhaps he wasn’t sulking with me after all.  Perhaps ...”  But what it was that she dreaded she could not have defined.  And then she caught the sound of an approaching automobile.  The car threw its shadow across the glazed front door, which she commanded from the kitchen, and stopped.  And the front-door bell rang uncannily over her head.  She opened the door to Councillor Batchgrew, whose breathing was irregular and rapid.

“Has Louis Fores been here?” Batchgrew asked.

“He’s upstairs now with Mrs. Maldon.”

Without warning, Thomas Batchgrew strode into the house and straight upstairs.  His long whiskers sailed round the turn of the stairs and disappeared.  Rachel was somewhat discomfited, and very resentful.  But her dread was not thereby diminished.  “They’ll kill the old lady between them if they don’t take care,” she thought.

The next instant Louis appeared at the head of the stairs.  With astounding celerity Rachel slipped into the parlour.  She could not bear to encounter him in the lobby—­it was too narrow.  She heard Louis come down the stairs, saw him take his hat from the oak chest and heard him open the front gate.  In the lobby he had looked neither to right nor left.  “How do, Ernest!” she heard him greet the amateur chauffeur-in-chief of the Batchgrew family.  His footfalls on the pavement died away into the general silence of the street.  Overhead she could hear old Batchgrew walking to and fro.  Without reflection she went upstairs and hovered near the door of Mrs. Maldon’s bedroom.  She said to herself that she was not eavesdropping.  She listened, while pretending not to listen, but there was no sign of conversation within the room.  And then she very distinctly heard old Batchgrew exclaim—­

“And they go gallivanting off together to the cinema!”