“Peel-Swynnerton.” Then he looked up again.
He said the words awkwardly, and rather fearfully, as if aware that he was playing with fire. If this Mrs. Scales was the long-vanished aunt of his friend, Cyril Povey, she must know those two names, locally so famous. Did she start? Did she show a sign of being perturbed? At first he thought he detected a symptom of emotion, but in an instant he was sure that he had detected nothing of the sort, and that it was silly to suppose that he was treading on the edge of a romance. Then she turned towards the letter-rack at her side, and he saw her face in profile. It bore a sudden and astonishing likeness to the profile of Cyril Povey; a resemblance unmistakable and finally decisive. The nose, and the curve of the upper lip were absolutely Cyril’s. Matthew Peel-Swynnerton felt very queer. He felt like a criminal in peril of being caught in the act, and he could not understand why he should feel so. The landlady looked in the ‘P’ pigeon-hole, and in the ‘S’ pigeon-hole.
“No,” she said quietly, “I see nothing for you.”
Taken with a swift rash audacity, he said: “Have you had any one named Povey here recently?”
“Povey?”
“Yes. Cyril Povey, of Bursley—in the Five Towns.”
He was very impressionable, very sensitive, was Matthew Peel-Swynnerton. His voice trembled as he spoke. But hers also trembled in reply.
“Not that I remember! No! Were you expecting him to be here?”
“Well, it wasn’t at all sure,” he muttered. “Thank you. Good-night.”
“Good-night,” she said, apparently with the simple perfunctoriness of the landlady who says good-night to dozens of strangers every evening.