All this complication proved very startling to Basset. He knew nothing of his brother's Jersey journey, though he always suspected his secret ties; but, ignoring the latter, he at once put his household in super-mourning, and took possession of Restormel Court as his own, leaving, however, no means untried to prove the death by drowning of Arthur Tresilian, though the name of Lydiard was borne on the list of passengers.
The following day saw Diana and her sons, attired in deepest mourning, at the Court, requesting an audience with Mr. Basset Tresilian--her close cap and concealed hair, her long crape weepers, and face deadly with pallor, announcing her recent widowhood, which Basset viewed with a sneer, as with a haggard eye she looked at the stiff ancestral portraits, the cedar carvings of the stately library, the blazing fire, the gleaming tiles, and picturesque furniture of white and gold and crimson velvet.
She announced with quiet dignity, yet not without doubt and much perturbation, that she came as the widow of the late Mr. Tresilian, to claim her place, and the places of his children, at Restormel Court. He replied, calmly--
"You have proofs, I presume, of all this, Mrs.--Mrs. Lydiard?"
"Mrs. Tresilian, sir!" said she, while her Arthur, in silence and bewilderment, recognised an uncle in the father of his Mona.
Alas! Diana had neither the certificate nor the will; both had gone down into the deep, with her hapless husband. She had, however, the letter referring to those documents: but Basset, after a furtive glance at the fire, tossed it hack to her contemptuously, saying--
"I have heard of you before, madam--years ago, too. My brother is drowned, and you are now poor. I dislike death and poverty, and all that sort of thing; but I'll do what I can in the way of Christian charity, and have your hulking boys bound to trades. But you must leave this place at once; the ladies of my family must not come in contact with--such as you."
She rose, and left the stately house mechanically, with one hand on Arthur's arm and the other on the neck of Ralf; and she looked at them in agony--the latter her little pet, the other the stately king of the playing fields, and captain of the school eleven, to be tradesmen!