“There is a lot to do, I admit,” said Miss Grison, nodding, “but I notice that many of the rooms are shut up, my dear.”
“We—uncle and I, that is—do not require so many.”
“I looked into some, and found them bare of furniture,” pursued Miss Grison calmly, and with her hard, unwinking stare. “Yet in my time there was a lot of valuable——”
“Pardon me, Miss Grison,” interrupted Fuller, seeing the consternation of Marie, “but don’t you think you are taking rather a liberty in entering the house and in talking like this?”
“It may appear a liberty to you, Mr. Fuller,” she rejoined quietly, “but it will not to Mr. Sorley. We are old friends.”
“Friends,” said Alan with emphasis.
She turned on him with a flash in her eyes. “Did he ever give you to understand otherwise?” she demanded, drawing quick breaths. “Has he ever mentioned my name to you?”
She waited for a reply but none came, as Alan was deliberating whether it would be wise to inform her of the way in which Mr. Sorley had spoken. Also he wondered if Miss Grison knew that her brother had been murdered for the sake of the peacock, and if she could tell how Baldwin became possessed of the same. But he felt that it would be best not to ask questions, or to make answers, until he knew his ground better. With her hard look, the little woman waited for him to speak, but he was saved the trouble by the unexpected entrance of Mr. Randolph Sorley. He was perfectly dressed as usual in a well-cut suit of blue serge and wore patent leather boots, together with a smart scarf of white silk fastened with a black pearl breast-pin. If he was a miser in some things, as Marie asserted, he assuredly was not so in the matter of clothes, for no one could have been better turned out, or have looked more aristocratic. His carriage was so upright, his hair so short, his face so bronzed and his greenish eyes so alert that he had quite a military appearance. He even looked young in the dusky atmosphere of the big room, and it was only when he came forward more into the light that he betrayed his sixty years. And that was possibly because Alan knew his true age, for the smooth, clean-shaven face looked much younger in spite of the white hair.
“Mr. Fuller! Miss Grison,” he said slowly, “this is indeed a surprise. I am delighted to see you both.”
And indeed he appeared to be so, for his smile was open, his speech soft and his manner frank. After what he had said about the woman on the previous day Fuller quite expected that he would be rude to her and—since he had other plans in his head—the young man quite expected that he would be rude to him also. But Mr. Sorley was apparently too well-bred to act impolitely in what he regarded as his own house, even if that same house was the property of Marie Inderwick. Miss Grison’s blue eyes glittered a trifle more as he shook hands with her cordially but otherwise she remained her impenetrable self. And remembering what she had said about her host, Alan was as amazed at her behavior as he was at Sorley’s. As to Marie, she was so relieved that her uncle received Alan courteously that she never gave a thought to the possibility that he might be acting a part for reasons best known to himself.