"It's a man, mum," said the little girl. (Grace had got her cheap
from an orphanage.) "A gentleman, mum. He's asking for Mrs.
Trenchard. 'E give me 'is card. Oh, mum, 'e is wet too!"
She had scarcely finished, and Grace had only taken the card, when
Mathew Cardinal came forward out of the hall. He was a dim and
mysterious figure in that half-light, but Grace could see that he
was more battered and shabby than on his last visit. His coat collar
was turned up. She could only very vaguely see his face, but it
seemed to her strangely white when before it had been so grossly
red.
She was struck by his immobility. Partly perhaps because she had
been roused from sleep and was yet neither clear nor resolved, he
seemed to her some nightmare figure. This was the man who was
responsible for all the trouble and scandal, this was the man who
threatened to drive Paul and herself from her home, this was the
blackguard who had not known how to behave in decent society. But
behind that was the terror of the mystery that enveloped Maggie--the
girl's uncle, the man who had shared in her strange earlier life,
and made her what she now was.
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