“I have ridden to Weston and to Heythrop since midday.”
“Have you eaten?”
“Not since breakfast, my lord.” The man’s eyes were wolfish with hunger and weariness.
“Then you shall eat, for there can be no business between a full man and a fasting. The groom will see to your horse. Follow me.”
Lord Cornbury led the way past the angle of the house to where the lit windows of the dining-room made a glow in the dark.
“ ’Tis a night of queer doings,” he whispered to Alastair, as they heard the heavy feet of the stranger stumbling behind them. “We will surprise Kit Lacy in his cups, but there will be some remnants of supper for this fellow. ’Pon my soul, I am curious to know what has shifted such a gravity out of bed.”
He unlocked the garden-door and led the way through the great hall to the dining-room. Sir Christopher, mellow but still sober, was interrupted in a song, and, with admirable presence of mind, cut it short in a view holloa. Mr. Kyd, rosy as the dawn, hastened to place chairs.
“Your pardon, gentlemen, but I bring you a famished traveller. Sit down, sir, and have at that pie. There is claret at your elbow.”
The newcomer muttered thanks and dropped heavily into a chair. Under the bright candelabrum, among crystal and silver and shining fruit and the gay clothes of the others, he cut an outrageous figure. He might have been in years about the age of Lord Cornbury, but disease and rough usage had wiped every sign of youth from his face. That face was large, heavily-featured and pitted deep with the scars of scrofula. The skin was puffy and grey, the eyes beneath the prominent forehead were pale and weak, the mouth was cast in hard lines as if from suffering. His immense frame was incredibly lean and bony, and yet from his slouch seemed unwholesomely weighted with flesh. He wore his own hair, straight and lank and tied with a dusty ribbon. His clothes were of some coarse grey stuff and much worn, and, though on a journey, he had no boots, but instead clumsy unbuckled shoes and black worsted stockings. His cuffs and neckband were soiled, and overcrowded pockets made his coat hang on him like a sack. Such an apparition could not but affect the best-bred gentleman. Kit Lacy’s mouth was drawn into a whistle, Mr. Kyd sat in smiling contemplation. Alastair thought of Simon Lovat as he had last seen that vast wallowing chieftain, and then reflected that Simon carried off his oddity by his air of arrogant command. This fellow looked as harassed as a mongrel that boys have chivvied into a corner. He cut himself a wedge of pie and ate gobblingly. He poured out a tankard of claret and swallowed most of it at a gulp. Then he grew nervous, choked on a crumb, gulped more claret and coughed till his pale face grew crimson.
The worst pangs of hunger allayed, he seemed to recollect his errand. His lips began to mutter as if he were preparing a speech. His tired eyes rested in turn on each member of the company, on Lacy and Kyd lounging at the other side of the table, on Cornbury’s decorous figure at the head, on Alastair wrapped in his own thoughts at the foot. This was not the private conference he had asked for, but it would appear that the urgency of his need must override discretion. A spasm of pain distorted the huge face, and he brought his left hand down violently on the table, so that the glasses shivered.
“My lord,” he said, “she is gone.”
The company stared, and Sir Christopher tittered.
“Who is your ‘she,’ sir?” he asked as he helped himself to wine.
“Miss Grevel … Miss Claudia.”
The young baronet’s face changed.
“The devil! Gone! Explain yourself, sir.”
The man had swung round so that he faced Lord Cornbury, with his head screwed oddly over his right shoulder. As he spoke it bobbed in a kind of palsied eagerness.
“You know her, my lord. Miss Claudia Grevel; the cousin and housemate of the young heir of Chastlecote, who has been committed to my charge. Three days ago she was of age and the controller of her fortune. This morning the maids found her bed unslept in, and the lady flown.”
Lord Cornbury exclaimed. “Did she leave no word?” he asked.
“Only a letter to her cousin, bidding him farewell.”
“Nothing to you?”
“To me nothing. She was a high lady and to her I was only the boy’s instructor. But I had marked for some weeks a restlessness in her deportment and, fearing some rash step, I had kept an eye on her doings.”
“You spied on her?” said Kyd sweetly. “Is that part of an usher’s duties?”
The man was too earnest to feel the rudeness of the question.
“She was but a child, sir,” he said. “She had neither father nor mother, and she was about to be sole mistress of a rich estate. I pitied her, and, though she in no way condescended to me, I loved her youth and beauty.”
“You did right,” Lord Cornbury said. “Have your observations given you no clue to the secret of her flight?”
“In some measure, my lord. You must know that Miss Grevel is ardent in politics, and, like many gentlewomen, has a strong sentiment for the young Prince now in Scotland. She has often declared that if she had been a man she would long ago have hastened to his standard, and she was wont to rage against the apathy of the Oxfordshire squires. A scrap of news from the North would put her into a fury or an exaltation. There was one gentleman of the neighbourhood who was not apathetic and who was accordingly most welcome at Chastlecote. From him she had her news of the Prince, and it was clear by his manner towards her that he valued her person as well as shared her opinions. I have been this
