'You had better ask him.'
'I think I shall. If I were Harry I should ask him many questions, and all of an extremely personal nature.'
'Who's this, what's this all about?' and Harry himself joined them, flinging himself down in a chair in the salon, wiping his forehead with a lace handkerchief. 'What are you discussing, both of you?'
'We were discussing your manservant,' said Rockingham, with a brilliant smile, 'so strange that Dona would permit no one else to attend her while she was ill.'
'Yes, by heaven, he's a rum-looking devil, and no mistake. Wouldn't trust him too far, if I were you, Dona. What d'you see in the fellow?'
'He is quiet, he is discreet, he walks soundlessly, and nobody else in the house does those things. Therefore I determined I should be nursed by him and by no one else.'
'Extremely pleasant for the manservant,' said Rockingham, polishing his nails.
'Yes, hang it,' blustered Harry, 'Rock's quite right, you know, Dona. The fellow might have taken infernal liberties. It was a damned risky thing to do. You lying weak and helpless in bed, and the fellow creeping about round you. He's not like an old retainer either, I know very little about him.'
'Oh, so he has not been in your service long?' said Rockingham.
'No. Hang it, Rock, we never come to Navron, as you know. And I'm so confounded idle I never know half the time who my servants are. I've a mind to dismiss him.'
'You will do nothing of the kind,' said Dona; 'William shall remain in my service for as long as it pleases me.'
'All right, all right, no need to be tricky about it,' said Harry, picking up Duchess and fondling her, 'but it looks a trifle queer to have the fellow hanging about your bedroom. Here he is anyway, bringing a letter from someone. He looks as if he were sickening for some fever himself.' Dona glanced at the door, and there was William, with a note in his hand, and his face paler than usual, and there was something of strain in his eyes. 'What's this, eh?' said Harry.
'A letter from Lord Godolphin, Sir Harry,' answered William. 'His man has just brought it, and waits for an answer.'
Harry tore open the letter, and then threw it across to Rockingham with a laugh. 'The hounds are gathering, Rock,' he said, 'we shall have some fun out of this.'
Rockingham read the note with a smile, and then tore it into fragments.
'What answer will you give?' he said.
Harry examined the back of his spaniel, pulling aside the dog's coat. 'She has another patch of eczema here, confound it,' he said, 'that pomade I'm trying is no use at all. What d'you say? Oh, yes, an answer for Godolphin. Tell the man, will you, William, that her ladyship and I will be delighted to receive his lordship and the other gentlemen this evening for supper.'
'Very good, sir,' said William.
'And what invitation is this?' asked Dona, patting her curls in the mirror, 'and who shall I be delighted to receive?'
'George Godolphin, Tommy Eustick, Philip Rashleigh, and half-a-dozen others,' said Harry, flinging the dog off his knee, 'and they're going to catch the froggie at last, aren't they, Duchess, and we shall be in at the kill.'
Dona said nothing, and looking back into the room through the mirror she saw that Rockingham was watching her.
'It will be an amusing party, do you not think?' he said.
'I rather doubt it,' said Dona, 'knowing Harry as a host. You will all be under the table by midnight.'
She went out of the room and when she had closed the door she called to William softly, and he came to her at once, his eyes troubled.
'What is it?' she said, 'you are anxious. Lord Godolphin and his friends, they can't do anything, it will be too late, La Mouette will have sailed.'
'No, my lady,' said William, 'she will not have sailed. I have been down to the creek to warn my master. And I found the ship had grounded with this morning's tide, a rock piercing her planking under water. They were working on her when I went to the creek. And she will not be fit to sail for twenty-four hours.'
His eyes wandered from her face, he moved away, and Dona, glancing over her shoulder saw that the door she had just closed had been opened again, and Rockingham was standing in the entrance, playing with the lace at his wrists.
Chapter XVII
THE LONG DAY dragged to its close. The hands of the stable clock seemed reluctant to move, and the chimes every half-hour had a sombre tone. The afternoon was sultry and grey, with that heavy look about the sky that comes when thunder brews but does not break.
Harry had lain out upon the lawns with a handkerchief over his face, snoring loudly, with his two dogs snuffling by his side, and Rockingham sat with a book open in his hands, the pages of which he seldom turned, and when Dona glanced across at him from time to time she would be aware of his gaze upon her, curious and hungry.
He knew nothing, of course, but some uncanny intuition, almost feminine in quality, had observed the change in her, and he was suspicious, suspicious of the weeks she had spent here at Navron, of her familiarity with the manservant William, and of this more than ordinary aloofness towards Harry and himself, which he could swear came not from boredom but from something more vital, more dangerous. She was more silent than of old, she did not chatter, tease, and gibe at Harry as she was wont to do, but sat plucking the stems of grass with her hands, her eyes half-closed, like one who dreams in secret. All this he observed, and she knew that he was watching her, and the tension between them became more marked as the hours passed. It seemed to her that he had the brooding watchfulness of a cat, crouching beneath a tree, and she was the bird, silent amongst the long grass, waiting her chance to escape.
And Harry, oblivious to all atmospheres, slumbered and sighed.
Dona knew that the men would be working on the planking of the ship. She pictured them at low tide, with bare-feet, stripped to the waist, the sweat pouring off their backs, and La Mouette, with the wound in her hull exposed, heeling slightly, her planking grey with the mud.
He would be working with them, his forehead wrinkled, his lips compressed, with that look of concentration upon his face that she had grown to love and to respect, for the repairing of his ship would be a thing of life and of death, even as the landing at Fowey had been, and there would be no time now for idleness, for dreams.
Somehow, before to-night, she must go to the creek, and beg him to sail with the next tide, although La Mouette might still be taking in water, for the net was drawing in upon him, and to linger even one night longer must be fatal for him and for his crew.
The ship had been seen drawing towards the coast, so Rockingham had told her, and now nearly twenty-four hours had come and gone, and much might have been achieved in that time by his enemies, much might have been foreseen and planned. There would be watchers perhaps upon the headlands, and spies on the hills and in the woods, and to-night Rashleigh, Godolphin, and Eustick would themselves be seated at Navron, with God knows what purpose in their minds.
'You are thoughtful, Dona,' said Rockingham, and she, looking across at him, saw that he had laid his book aside and was considering her, his head upon one side, his narrow eyes unsmiling. 'It must be the fever that has altered you so,' he continued, 'for in town you were never silent for five minutes at a time.'
'I am getting old,' she said lightly, chewing a stem of grass, 'in a few weeks I shall be thirty.'
'A curious fever,' he said, ignoring her words, 'that leaves the patient with gypsy coloring and eyes so large. You did not see a physician, it seems?'
'I was my own physician.'
'With the advice of the excellent William. What an unusual accent he has, by-the-way. Quite a foreign intonation.'
