Holcomb threw up his head with a jerk—his clenched fists rigid on the log.
"I'm telling you this," Blakeman went on, not waiting for him to reply, "because I believe you can help. I have always made it a rule in service to keep silent, no matter what passes in a family. I meddled once at Ostend in an affair of the like of this, and it taught me a lesson. There'll be trouble here if things go on like this—maybe later a divorce—and a divorce is the devil in a family like Mr. Thayor's. Neither you nor me want that; we must stand by the little girl and the master and avoid it."
"What do you intend to do?" inquired Holcomb, staring grimly at the ground.
"I'm going to give madame a chance—she's a fool, but she's not crooked; that is, I don't think she is," Blakeman replied. "Then I'll speak out."
"Do you think Mr. Thayor suspects anything?" asked Holcomb, after a moment's hesitation.
"He's not that kind. I dare not tell him—never in the world would tell him. You might—he would listen to you. Butlers are seldom believed—I've tried it."
He gathered up the pair of fat partridges and stuffed them in his pocket.
"And you advise me to tell him?" asked Holcomb slowly.
"No," returned Blakeman, "I don't. It would go hard with him and Miss Margaret; he's had hell enough in his life already; he's happy now—so is Miss Margaret. It's not always you find two people happy in the same family." He buttoned the collar of his shooting coat about his neck, for the sun was burning below the edge of the forest and with its last rays the woods grew still and cold. "I propose to watch madame and find out whether she is bad or whether she's only losing her head," said Blakeman, as he rose to go. "Mind you do the same—mind you promise me you will."
Blakeman had lifted his mask. Holcomb saw in him no longer the suave, trained domestic, but a man of intelligence—a man with a heart and a wide experience in a world which he as yet knew but little of.