"It's going to be rather a harder job than I thought, Charlotte," he said at length, pausing in his walk and staring gloomily down at his wife, "so many things have turned out differently to what we thought. Why couldn't the old fool have said he was bringing Aunt Eliza? she's never come before when he's paid us a visit. I thought I should have fainted dead off just now when the old fellow asked me to show him which was the bath-room—he takes a cold tub every morning. Fancy not knowing where the bath-room is in one's own house. I had to open every door I came to and call out 'puss'—said I was looking for a kitten we'd lost—until I came to the right one, the fifth door I opened I think it was."
Edward passed his handkerchief over his forehead, then resumed.
"I blame you, Charlotte, for the unfortunate affair of the photo album. You should have put the book out of sight like you did the framed photos. I can't understand old Kyser keeping such a book full of crocks anyway, I'd be frightened to death of blackmail. You ought to have known that albums are Aunt Eliza's special weakness. She got hold of it at once and made me go through all the lot and tell her who they were and all about them." Edward grew hot at the remembrance. "It isn't easy to invent names and plausible histories for an assorted lot like that at a moment's notice—ugly lot of devils, too."
"The whole idea is yours remember, Edward."
"I know that, woman. Do you think it makes it any easier for me?—you shouldn't have let me—you——"
"You forget, Edward, you said that you were to be master in your own house."
"This isn't my own house, is it? But look here, Charlotte, it's not the least bit of good our arguing how we came to be here. We are here, and here we've got to stay and make the best of a bad job. All we need is a little bit of coaching in some of the minor details. Come over here."
Edward took up a richly chased candelabra and led the way to the fire-place. He removed the little paper shades and let the light fall full upon the portrait of an aged and benevolent-looking gentleman in a splendid old English gilt frame.
"See him, Charlotte; I thought all dinner time your uncle was going to ask who he was. He's sure to ask to-morrow, inquisitive old idiot, and we've got to be prepared. Listen. This old chap here is a Mr. Tobias Kenwick—that doesn't sound faked, does it?—not like Brown or Smith. If uncle asks what he was, say he was an engineer and that he's now retired and living in Peru. This old lady over the sideboard," went on Edward, crossing the room, "can be a friend of my mother's; say she's been dead some years now and that you forget her name but think it was Jane something. Any other portraits he asks about say we picked them up at a sale. By the bye, I must congratulate you on your excuse for the absence of the servant—the dying sister in the North of Scotland was an inspiration. I'd trot off to bed now, Charlotte my dear, if I were you. I'll be up presently. I've got a bit of hard thinking to get through here before I think of sleep."
Left to himself Edward ruminated deeply on the situation in which he had placed himself. Things had not turned out at all as he had expected and dilemmas had crowded thickly and fast upon him. The advent of Aunt Eliza had entirely unnerved him, and the amount of luggage which he had helped to take up to the bedroom seemed to him to be quite unnecessary for a short visit such as he had anticipated. Hitherto the visits of Uncle Jasper had been always the same, a night or two at the most and the days spent in business in London. His luggage had been invariably one suit case and a hatbox. But the present visit pointed more to a prolonged holiday than to a business trip. Edward tried to tell himself that there was nothing to fear, that Kyser would not return for a month, and that the secluded position of Adderbury Cottage was all in favour of the scheme; detection from the outside was a very remote chance.