Loveday bowed her head.
“Very well, Now will you be good enough to tell me what this scene of confusion recalls to your mind before anything else?”
“The room of an unpopular Oxford freshman after a raid upon it by undergrads,” answered Loveday promptly.
Mr. Griffiths rubbed his hands.
“Quite so!” he ejaculated. “I see, after all, we are one at heart in this matter, in spite of a little surface disagreement of ideas. Depend upon it, by-and-by, like the engineers tunneling from different quarters under the Alps, we shall meet at the same point and shake hands. By-the-way, I have arranged for daily communication between us through the postboy who takes the letters to Troyte’s Hill. He is trustworthy, and any letter you give him for me will find its way into my hands within the hour.”
It was about three o’clock in the afternoon when Loveday drove in through the park gates of Troyte’s Hill, past the lodge where old Sandy had met with his death. It was a pretty little cottage, covered with Virginia creeper and wild honeysuckle, and showing no outward sign of the tragedy that had been enacted within.
The park and pleasure-grounds of Troyte’s Hill were extensive, and the house itself was a somewhat imposing red brick structure, built, possibly, at the time when Dutch William’s taste had grown popular in the country. Its frontage presented a somewhat forlorn appearance, its centre windows—a square of eight—alone seeming to show signs of occupation. With the exception of two windows at the extreme end of the bedroom floor of the north wing, where, possibly, the invalid and his mother were located, and two windows at the extreme end of the ground floor of the south wing, which Loveday ascertained subsequently were those of Mr. Craven’s study, not a single window in either wing owned blind or curtain. The wings were extensive, and it was easy to understand that at the extreme end of the one the fever patient would be isolated from the rest of the household, and that at the extreme end of the other Mr. Craven could secure the quiet and freedom from interruption which, no doubt, were essential to the due prosecution of his philological studies.
Alike on the house and ill-kept grounds were present the stamp of the smallness of the income of the master and owner of the place. The terrace, which ran the length of the house in front, and on to which every window on the ground floor opened, was miserably out of repair: not a lintel or doorpost, window-ledge or balcony but what seemed to cry aloud for the touch of the painter. “Pity me! I have seen better days,” Loveday could fancy written as a legend across the redbrick porch that gave entrance to the old house.
The butler, John Hales, admitted Loveday, shouldered her portmanteau and told her he would show her to her room. He was a tall, powerfully-built man, with a ruddy face and dogged expression of countenance. It was easy to understand that, off and on, there must have been many a sharp encounter between him and old Sandy. He treated Loveday in an easy, familiar fashion, evidently considering that an amanuensis took much the same rank as a nursery governess—that is to say, a little below a lady’s maid and a little above a housemaid.
“We’re short of hands, just now,” he said, in broad Cumberland dialect, as he led the way up the wide stair case. “Some of the lasses downstairs took fright at the fever and went home. Cook and I are single-handed, for Moggie, the only maid left, has been told off to wait on Madam and Master Harry. I hope you’re not afeared of fever?”
Loveday explained that she was not, and asked if the room at the extreme end of the north wing was the one assigned to “Madam and Master Harry.”
“Yes,” said the man; “it’s convenient for sick nursing; there’s a flight of stairs runs straight down from it to the kitchen quarters. We put all Madam wants at the foot of those stairs and Moggie herself never enters the sickroom. I take it you’ll not be seeing Madam for many a day, yet awhile.”
“When shall I see Mr. Craven? At dinner tonight?”
“That’s what naebody could say,” answered Hales. “He may not come out of his study till past midnight; sometimes he sits there till two or three in the morning. Shouldn’t advise you to wait till he wants his dinner—better have a cup of tea and a chop sent up to you. Madam never waits for him at any meal.”
As he finished speaking he deposited the portmanteau outside one of the many doors opening into the gallery.
“This is Miss Craven’s room,” he went on; “cook and me thought you’d better have it, as it would want less getting ready than the other
