Even though she remained with them, and in perfect contentment, there
would still be the sinister shadow lying across the path--the shadow
of a man hiding, of a man who dared not come out into the open but
whose everlasting presence was a threat.
They did not know this man, they did not know whether he was a
blackguard or a gentleman. He was a destroyer; that much they knew. He
had wrecked a human life. The detective had declared to Mr. Bingle
that his client was a man of means, married, and eminently
respectable, but then a detective's idea of respectability is not
always a safe one to go by. Every man is respectable until some one is
hired to prove that he isn't.
When Mr. Force rang the front door-bell, Mr. and Mrs. Bingle were
seated before the fire in the library. Kathleen sat upon the former's
knee. The rest of the children had been sent off to the huge playroom
on the top floor, and their distant shrieks, muffled by the
thicknesses of many doors and walls, came faintly down to the
fireside. With the subdued, even refined jingle of the door-bell, the
two Bingles straightened up in their chairs and looked into each
other's eyes, suddenly apprehensive.
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