At length the two bent their steps to this inner temple of their expectations. They were weary and a little depressed, and they sat themselves down in a fan of weak sunlight that spread through the broad window.
Sir David looked about him with some listless curiosity—at the great posted bed; at the massive carved wardrobe of sombre oak; at the quaint old brass-framed mirror on the dressing-table.
“Was this all as it stands when you came?” he said, his inquisitiveness getting the better of his languor.
“Precisely as it stands.”
“Then it belonged to Cutwater?”
“I presume so.”
“By cock!” said the other, dreamily introspective, “’tis cursed strange to think that here the man prinked and made his toilet and slept his sleep like any decent citizen. He was known by his blue coat and filigree lace, I’ve heard tell; and what bloody secrets may he not have locked into that wardrobe, and what dumb witnesses to his villainy? For he would take life, by all accounts, and was a terror in his day. And was there nothin’, Tuke—no trace——”
“Not a rag in all the room. If any had been, it had been cleared out before I came.”
“Well, he had his vanities; for all that his reputation, as I knew it, was rascal miserly. And he shows a pretty taste in bed and wardrobe. But there ain’t one consistent miser in all the history of niggards.”
“I seem to have heard of one or two.”