“Did he say when he’d be back?”
“No,” said Mrs. Royce. “He didn’t say much of anything. He’s a kind of quiet young man, ain’t he? Well, he’d ought to get on with his sister, then.”
“Is she very quiet?” asked Lexy.
“Quiet!” repeated Mrs. Royce. “Set down an’ begin to eat, Miss Moran. I’ve fixed a real nice tasty breakfast for you, if I do say it as shouldn’t. Corn gems, too. Mis’ Quelton quiet? I should say she was! Quiet as”—she paused—“as the dead,” she went on, and the phrase made an unpleasant impression upon Lexy. “An’ her husband, too. I never saw the like of them. They never come into the village, an’ nobody ever goes out there to the Tower. About twice a week the doctor drives into Lymewell—the town below here—and he buys a lot of food an’ all, an’ he goes home. I can see him out of my front winder, an’ the sight of him, driving along in that black buggy of his—it gives me the shivers!”
“But if he’s a doctor—”
“Don’t ask me what kind of doctor he is, Miss Moran! He don’t go to see the sick—that’s all I know.”
“But his wife—what is she like?”
“Miss Moran,” said the landlady, with profound impressiveness, “I guess there ain’t three people in Wyngate that’s ever set eyes on her!”
“But how awfully queer!”
“You may well say ‘queer,’” said Mrs. Royce. “There she stays, out in that lonely place—never seeing a soul from one month’s end to another. She’s a young woman, too—young, an’ just as pretty as a picture.”