The manservant had taken up a silver plate as we passed through the hall, and laid our cards on it. He now asked, “Shall I take these cards to his lordship, sir?”
He must have seen me start at the question. I put my hand into my pocket, searching his face carefully the while.
“There is no occasion for that,” I said. “Our business with her ladyship is private, and she may not wish his lordship to be troubled with it.” I took out a note before adding, “Perhaps you remember my face?”
The man looked pleased. His chances of adding to his wages can’t have been very many in that lonely mansion. It seemed to me, moreover, that he was genuinely attached to his young mistress.
“Why, yes, sir. I did have a thought as I had seen you here before. You were staying at the Moorfield Farm, if I rec’lect rightly, sir, three years ago or might be four.”
I nodded, and the piece of paper passed silently from my hand to his.
“I’ve come to do a service to Lady Violet, if I can,” I told him. “Her ladyship knows I am coming, and she has gone out to meet me. I want you to let me out at the back of the Castle, so that I can join her; and say nothing to the friend who has come with me, or anybody else.”
He gave me a quick look of intelligence. “I understand, sir.”
He led the way out of the library again, and along a corridor still more deserted and dismal than the hall. It ended at a locked and barred door which he unfastened with some effort.
“This is the way into the ruins,” he explained. “You can pass out from them into a path that leads through the home meadows up to the Moorfield Farm. It’s a public footpath, and if anyone sees you they’ll think you’ve been exploring the ruins from outside.”