The consultant put on the air of a man who has made a slip.
“No, no; of course not. I meant to ask her ladyship herself.” He turned to me. “What do you say, Cassilis? Shall we wait inside, or shall we go for a stroll and come back again?”
I had laid my plans in the expectation that Lady Violet would be out, and I was ready with a suggestion. I made it with my heart in my mouth.
“I think one of us ought to wait here, Sir Frank. The other might walk round the park, and perhaps meet Lady Violet.”
Sir Frank seemed to find the proposal quite natural.
“Very good. I shall be glad to stretch my legs for an hour, so I’ll leave you here and come back again.”
This was an unforeseen check. I had been so sure of being the one to go out into the grounds, if I could effect the separation, that I hadn’t thought of the alternative. My only chance now was to slip out as soon as Tarleton’s back was turned. I looked at the servant, and fancied that his eye rested on me with a more friendly air than on my companion.
“Would you like to wait inside, sir?” he asked.
I hesitated. But I had to choose between trusting him and trusting the chauffeur who had driven us out from Hereford; and he had impressed me favourably. I followed him into the Castle, while Tarleton moved off down an avenue of beeches in the park.
The servant brought me through a dreary hall full of old suits of armour and ancient high-backed chairs, but lacking in those little touches of modern comfort that are needed to make such a place home-like and attractive to the eye. He opened a door towards the inner end, and ushered me into a gloomy library, fitted up with great bookcases that looked as if they were never opened, stuffed with huge leather-bound volumes of the kind that no human being any longer wants to read. The whole room reminded me of the fairy tale of the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood. It seemed to breathe of the eighteenth century, as though its life had been arrested then, and no one had trodden the faded carpet or taken down one of the dusty tomes for a hundred long years since.