Here, at any rate, was a board spread with food and drink, and, amongst them, a couple of candles in brass sconces. The revivifying sight led the baronet to look about him with a wider geniality. Certainly the room was beautiful in its proportions and in its air of antique solemnity. The floor was paved with solid stone flags; the walls were oak up to the ceiling; and a long oriel window, now heavily shuttered, was set deep in the masonry of the side over against the hearth.
The tired man sat him down on a wooden stool before the embers, and fell to a fit of musing over his queer destiny. So this was to be his fate—to plunge from the fever and glare of fashionable dissipation into a lonely and half-dismantled dwelling-place situate in the heart of an isolated thicket. Well, he had accepted his life on the terms, and the powers of destiny should find that he had the will to shake the life out of a resolution into which he had fastened his teeth.
In the depths of his pondering, he heard the front door slammed to and bolted, and was aware the next moment that the caretaker was standing in the room, silently awaiting his notice.
He twisted round on his perch, and regarded the man frowningly.
The latter hung his head under the scrutiny. He was a hectic, bashful-looking fellow, tall and weedy, with pale eyes and a weak, sloping chin. His age might have been thirty-eight or so—was in fact; though there was a curious suggestion of youthfulness in his smooth, shaven cheeks and soft, uncertain voice.
Mr. Tuke waved his hand towards the table.
“These preparations are for me?”
“The best we could compass, sir.”
He spoke with hesitancy, and in a manner of deprecation.
“The notice was very short. I had no instructions to provide but what the house could supply; and no means of learning your wishes.”