Dominey, with fingers that trembled a little, drew from the breast pocket of his coat a leather case, and from that a worn picture. The two men looked at it side by side beneath one of the electric standards which had been left burning. The face was the face of a girl, almost a child, and the great eyes seemed filled with a queer, appealing light. There was something of the same suggestion to be found in the lips, a certain helplessness, an appeal for love and protection to some stronger being.
Seaman turned away with a little grunt, and commented:
“Permitting myself to reassume for a moment or two the ordinary sentiments of an ordinary human being, I would sooner have a dozen of your Princesses to deal with than the original of that picture.”
CHAPTER VIII
“Your ancestral home,” Mr. Mangan observed, as the car turned the first bend in the grass-grown avenue and Dominey Hall came into sight. “Damned fine house, too!”
His companion made no reply. A storm had come up during the last few minutes, and, as though he felt the cold, he had dragged his hat over his eyes and turned his coat collar up to his ears. The house, with its great double front, was now clearly visible—the time-worn, Elizabethan, red brick outline that faced the park southwards, and the stone-supported, grim and weather-stained back which confronted the marshes and the sea. Mr. Mangan continued to make amiable conversation.
“We have kept the old place weathertight, somehow or other,” he said, “and I don't think you'll miss the timber much. We've taken it as far as possible from the outlying woods.”
“Any from the Black Wood?” Dominey asked, without turning his head.
“Not a stump,” he replied, “and for a very excellent reason. Not one of the woodmen would ever go near the place.”