“Were those all?” asked Hugh.
Mrs. Naylor could not suggest anyone else. Sir Roderick—well, he was one of those gentlemen that you didn’t know how to take. You might offend him mortally, and you wouldn’t know it except by his never having anything to do with you afterwards.
“You would rather not take any responsibility in the matter then, Mrs. Naylor?” asked Hugh, slightly amused.
The character of that strange man, lying for the present dead to the world without, was being unexpectedly revealed to him.
“I certainly would rather not, sir,” said Mrs. Naylor, briskly.
“But you will not object to give me his brother’s address?”
Mrs. Naylor being quite ready to give Mr. Edmund Pym’s address, Hugh wrote it down. Then he offered to take Mrs. Naylor to see her master.
From this she seemed to shrink; and it was only after being adjured that it was her duty to remain, at all events, in the hospital, until someone else belonging to Sir Roderick came—that she consented to visit the ward.
Mr. Edmund Pym arrived to visit his brother about nine in the evening: a singularly impassive personage, who showed no emotion whatever of any kind, and who departed as soon as possible.
Mrs. Naylor, evidently greatly relieved, slipped away after she had had a short interview with her master’s brother.