After that Gerald sat on the top stair with a book.
He could not hear any of the conversation in the drawing-room,
but he could command a view of the door, and in this way be
certain that no one else heard any of it. Thus it was that when the
drawing-room door opened Gerald was in a position to see Lord
Yalding come out. "Our young hero, as he said later, "coughed
with infinite tact to show that he was there," but Lord Yalding did
not seem to notice. He walked in a blind sort of way to the
hat-stand, fumbled clumsily with the umbrellas and macintoshes,
found his straw hat and looked at it gloomily, crammed it on his
head and went out, banging the door behind him in the most
reckless way.
He left the drawing-room door open, and Gerald, though he had
purposely put himself in a position where one could hear nothing
from the drawing-room when the door was shut, could hear
something quite plainly now that the door was open. That
something, he noticed with deep distress and disgust, was the
sound of sobs and sniffs. Mademoiselle was quite certainly crying.
"Jimminy!" he remarked to himself, "they haven't lost much time.
Fancy their beginning to quarrel already! I hope I'll never have to
be anybody's lover."
But this was no time to brood on the terrors of his own future.
Eliza might at any time occur. She would not for a moment
hesitate to go through that open door, and push herself into the
very secret sacred heart of Mademoiselle's grief.
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