Mutimer went oft angrily to see them.
He was engaged for half-an-hour. Then Adela heard the visitors
depart; one of them was speaking loudly and with irritation. She
waited for a moment at the head of the stairs, expecting that
Mutimer would come out to her. As he did not, she went into the
sitting-room.
Mutimer stood before the fireplace, his eyes on the ground, his face
discoloured with vehement emotion.
'What has happened?' she asked.
He looked up and beckoned to her to approach.
CHAPTER XXXIV
Adela bad never seen him so smitten with grave trouble. She knew him
in brutal anger and in surly ill-temper; but his present mood had
nothing of either. He seemed to stagger beneath a blow which had all
but crushed him and left him full of dread. He began to address her
in a voice very unlike his own--thick, uncertain; he used short
sentences, often incomplete.
'Those men are on the committee. One of them got a letter this
morning--anonymous. It said they were to be on their guard against
me. Said the Company's a swindle--that I knew it--that I've got
money out of the people on false pretences. And Hilary's gone--gone
off--taking all he could lay hands on. The letter says so--I don't
know. It says I'm thick with the secretary--a man I never even saw.
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