‘Pouchée,’ exclaimed Marjorie, the old spirit of contradiction taking possession of her, ‘there is a mystery about our excellent lodger which I mean to solve. You seldom enter his part of the house, you say? You were in his rooms last evening. I saw you enter through the baize door, as I have seen you do pretty often already. I heard your voice as you talked to him. Explain these things.’
‘Enfin! It would be better if the truth were told,’ said old Madame Pouchée in her own language. ‘Our gentleman is an enemy of the sex. What will you have! When he heard a young lady was coming to visit us——’
‘He offered, of free will, to go in and out by the other stairs,’ interrupted Pouchée, adroitly. ‘He showed the finest, most delicate consideration. Since that first evening when Marjorie perceived his pipe our gentleman has not smoked. He goes out early. He does not return until he is worn out with work—such work as his is, too—at night!’
‘Then it is impossible we can disturb him,’ exclaimed Marjorie, rising briskly from the table. ‘As a matter of architecture I am interested in the fourteenth-century stairs. The rooms they lead to must be equally curious. You need not chaperon me.’ She looked back at Pouchée across her shoulder. ‘I shall push back the mysterious red baize, and walk straight into Bluebeard’s chamber without knocking.’
And running up the stairs, she was about to put her threat into execution when Pouchée, by a dexterous flank movement, cut off her advance.
‘There may be a litter of papers. Grand ciel! there may be the bones, the skull.’ With her hands upon the lock, Mademoiselle Pouchée barred Marjorie’s progress by her own solid person; then, opening two inches of door, she peered in, cautiously. ‘No; we are in order. We have locked up our skeleton for once. You may enter, child—Barbe-bleu is not here to eat you.’
Marjorie Bartrand stopped short upon the threshold. Something in the meagrely furnished room, the piles of books, the small fireless grate, the absence of any pretence at decoration or cheerfulness, affected her strongly. She shrank from intruding, unbidden, on such valiantly borne poverty as was here in evidence before her.
‘And you have robbed him of Tintajeux Manoir!’ She glanced round at the bare, damp-stained walls. ‘Tintajeux at least gives one a notion of quick and wholesome air, of honest sunshine!’