The question came out abrupt, staccato. Some of the first agitation seemed to show itself again. And then, with the affirmative answer, both girls noticed that he looked greatly relieved.
“Well, I suppose you’re both ready for breakfast,” he went on in quite a normal tone. “I’m not, but you’re not obliged to wait for me. That would be too great a tax on your ravening young appetites, wouldn’t it? Eh, Miss Clinock?”
Violet, thus appealed to, laughingly disclaimed impatience on that head, but Melian thoroughly and emphatically disagreed with her.
“Well, you’d better go and hurry old Judy up,” said Mervyn. “I shall have to go and get dressed first.”
But he did not re-enter the house with them, nor, indeed, did he hurry to re-enter it at all. Both girls were rather silent and wondering, and in the minds of both was the same thought, though neither cared to voice it to the other, and the thought was a disquieting one; perhaps to Melian the more disquieting of the two. For to her clearer insight, and with the knowledge of her uncle’s character, which she had had some months of opportunity to gain, his explanation of the incident did not somehow carry conviction. There was more, far more beneath it than a mere matter of evolved recollection; of that she felt fully convinced. He was not the stamp of man who would be upset by such, and the practical side had come out in the very real fear—the agony of fear almost—which he had manifested over the discovery of that harmless looking star-shaped trinket. Trinket? Well, that for want of a better word. The thing, after all, might have been a trade mark of sorts which had come detached from a biscuit box or a tin of specially boomed blacking. No. There was more in this than met the eye.
Then she remembered that her uncle had spent his life in strange, out of the way parts of the world, mostly among strange people. What if there was nothing accidental about this shining pointed thing being left just where he could find it. What if it were some sort of a sign, some sort of a manifesto? What if some danger were overhanging him? And by a curious back twist in her mind the thought of Helston Varne came back to her. A tower of strength seemed that thought—and then came that which seemed to cut under its foundations.
They were both halfway through breakfast by then, when Mervyn entered—clothed and ready for the day before him. All trace of agitation seemed to have disappeared. He was even in unusual good spirits.
“By the way,” he said, in the course of conversation, which he had somewhat cleverly led up to, “I suppose you two children are old enough to know how not to talk. For instance—your find this morning. I particularly wish no word to be said about it to anybody—anybody. Not only round here, but anywhere. Perhaps some day—though I don’t absolutely promise that—I may give you an explanation; but only on condition nothing is said about it now.”
Both pairs of eyes sparked up. But Melian’s dropped. She could not take Helston Varne into confidence now.
“Why, Mr Mervyn,” answered Violet, readily, “of course we shan’t say anything about it.”