Crossing the hall, Jeffray went into the great salon that had been of old the prior’s parlor, and rang the bell for Peter Gladden. The butler, curious behind his respectful suavity, entered, to stare inquisitively at his master’s white and determined face. The sword that had pierced Lot’s body lay naked upon the table.
“Tell your wife to prepare the best bedroom. See that everything is in order.”
“Mrs. Elizabeth Grimshaw is to be my guest. Your wife must wait on her in person. Let her meals be served her in her bedroom. Your wife, Gladden, must sleep in the dressing-room that opens from Mrs. Grimshaw’s room. Understand me in this, Gladden, that every command must be obeyed.”
The butler, astonished, but too well disciplined to betray the feeling, bowed again to his master and appeared all deference and submission.
“Let one single piece of disrespect be shown to this lady, and you and your wife are dismissed from my service instantly.”
Jeffray found Dick Wilson sitting smoking at the open window of the library with his feet resting on the sill. He dropped his fat calves when Richard entered, and looked at him a little uneasily over his shoulder. Both men remembered the night of the Hardacre ball, when Wilson had confessed the truth of his old love affair with Miss Jilian. Jeffray felt that he could trust the painter, and he was in the spirit to treat him as a friend. Drawing up a chair beside Dick Wilson’s, he sat himself down before the open window.
“You saw the girl on the terrace, Dick?” he asked.
Wilson turned restlessly in his chair, his chin sunk upon his shabby green waistcoat.
“Do you remember where you saw her before?”
The painter shook his head and frowned as though mystified.
“You remember the day we drove to Thorney Chapel?”
Wilson cocked one shrewd blue eye at Jeffray, and removed his pipe-stem from between his lips.
“You have set me thinking, sir,” he said, suddenly.
Simply and with no choosing of words, no rounding of sentences, Jeffray told Wilson the tale of Bess of the Woods, how she had been forced to marry Dan, and of the mystery that appeared to surround her birth. The painter sat hunched up in his chair, sucking at his pipe, and blowing out clouds of smoke. His rugged face was grave and sympathetically attentive; he grunted expressively from time to time, watching Jeffray with his keen and humorous blue eyes. The lad had developed, strengthened marvellously in these few weeks. Wilson had not yet escaped from the astonishment with which he had watched Lot Hardacre go down before Jeffray’s rapid passes.