“You thief! you thief! what have you done with the will?”
Yes, indeed, there was great alteration. The old squire, if he had come to life again, would not have known Hurst as Stephen had made it. Masons, carpenters, and decorators had been at work to some purpose. Everything was changed, and unmistakably for the better.
Stephen looked around with an air of pride.
“They have been very quick,” he said. “I placed it in good hands. You will find everything you require up-stairs. You must know,” he said, turning to Una, “that I found the place little better than a barn, and have done my best to make it fit to receive you! You are looking at the portraits,” he added, seeing Una’s gaze wandering along the double line of dead and gone Davenants. Most of them you would not have seen two months ago, they had been terribly neglected, but I have had them cleaned and renewed. That is the old squire, my poor uncle,” and he sighed comfortably.
Una paused before this, the last portrait of the series, and looked at it long and curiously, and the other two stood and watched her, Stephen with a keen glance of scrutiny and with a nervous tremor about his heart. If she could but know that she was looking at the portrait of her own father! Una turned away at last with a faint sigh. She was thinking that this was the old man who had once loved Jack and left him to poverty.
Mrs. Davenant shuddered slightly.
“He was a terrible old man, my dear,” she murmured, “and always frightened me. I trembled when he looked at me.”
“He does not look so terrible,” said Una, sadly.
Stephen fidgeted slightly.
“Come,” he said, “you must not catch cold. Your maids are here by this time. Will you go up to your room? The housekeeper will show them to you, and I hope you will find everything comfortable.”