“We did not exchange confidences,” he observed. “Miss Fentolin only changed into my carriage during the last few minutes of her journey. Besides,” he continued, “to tell you the truth, my ideas as to my destination were a little hazy. To come and look for some queer sort of building by the side of the sea, which has been unoccupied for a dozen years or so, scarcely seems a reasonable quest, does it?”
“Scarcely, indeed,” Mr. Fentolin assented. “You may thank me, Mr. Hamel, for the fact that the place is not in ruins. My blatant trespassing has saved you from that, at least. After dinner we must talk further about the Tower. To tell you the truth, I have grown accustomed to the use of the little place.”
The sound of the dinner gong boomed through the house. A moment later Gerald entered, followed by a butler announcing dinner.
“The only remaining member of my family,” Mr. Fentolin remarked, indicating his nephew. “Gerald, you will be pleased, I know, to meet Mr. Hamel. Mr. Hamel has been a great traveller. Long before you can remember, his father used to paint wonderful pictures of this coast.”
Gerald shook hands with his visitor. His face, for a moment, lighted up. He was looking pale, though, and singularly sullen and dejected.
“There are two of your father’s pictures in the modern side of the gallery up-stairs,” he remarked, a little diffidently. “They are great favourites with everybody here.”
They all went in to dinner together. Meekins, who had appeared silently, had glided unnoticed behind his master’s chair and wheeled it across the hall.
“A partie carree to-night,” Mr. Fentolin declared. “I have a resident doctor here, a very delightful person, who often dines with us, but to-night I thought not. Five is an awkward number. I want to get to know you better, Mr. Hamel, and quickly. I want you, too, to make friends with my niece and nephew. Mr. Hamel’s father,” he went on, addressing the two latter, “and your father were great friends. By-the-by, have I told you both exactly why Mr. Hamel is a guest here to-night—why he came to these parts at all? No? Listen, then. He came to take possession of the Tower. The worst of it is that it belongs to him, too. His father bought it from your father more years ago than we should care to talk about. I have really been a trespasser all this time.”
They took their places at a small round table in the middle of the dining-room. The shaded lights thrown downwards upon the table seemed to leave most of the rest of the apartment in semi-darkness. The gloomy faces of the men and women whose pictures hung upon the walls were almost invisible. The servants themselves, standing a little outside the halo of light, were like shadows passing swiftly and noiselessly back and forth. At the far end of the room was an organ, and to the left a little balcony, built out as though for an orchestra. Hamel looked about him almost in wonderment. There was something curiously impressive in the size of the apartment and its emptiness.
“A trespasser,” Mr. Fentolin continued, as he took up the menu and criticised it through his horn-rimmed eyeglass, “that is what I have been, without a doubt.”