Parker leaned forwards to shake off the ash of
his cigar.
Then, on a sudden, he paused, for from the passage outside came the
passionless tinkle of an electric bell--then another, and another, and
another, as if some person overhead strove by reiteration on that
single note to cry out some overwhelming need.
II
Overhead in the great empty drawing-room the noise of the wind and
rain, the almost continuous spatter on the glass, and the long hooting
of the gusts, had been far more noticeable than in the basement
beneath. Below stairs the company had been natural and normal, talking
of this and that, in a brightly lighted room, dwelling only on matters
that fell beneath the range of their senses, lulled by warmth and food
and cigar-smoke into a kind of rapt self-contemplation. But up here,
in the gloom, lighted only on this occasion by a single shaded candle,
in a complete interior silence, three persons had sat round a table
for more than an hour, striving by passivity and a kind of
indescribable concentration to ignore all that was presented by the
senses, and to await some movement from that which lies beyond them.
Lady Laura had sat down that night in a state of mind which she could
not analyze.
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