Several days passed without bringing forth much incident. The gentlemen spent most of their time in the shooting-covers or hunting-field, and did not meet the ladies until evening re-assembled them in the drawing-room; on which occasions I used to get as far as I could from Lady Trevor and the professor’s wife, and in consequence generally found myself in the vicinity of Sir Harry and Lady Amabel. Yet, free and intimate as seemed their intercourse with one another, and narrowly as, in Justina’s interest, I watched them, I could perceive nothing in their conduct which was not justified by their relationship, and treated it as a matter of the smallest consequence, until one afternoon about a fortnight after my arrival at Durham Hall.
With the exception of Sir Harry himself, who had business to transact with his bailiff, we had all been out shooting, and as, after a hard day’s work, I was toiling up to my bedroom to dress for dinner, I had occasion to pass the study appropriated to the master of the house, and with a sudden desire to give him an account of our sport, incontinently turned the handle of the door. As I did so I heard an exclamation and the rustle of a woman’s dress, which were sufficient to make me halt upon the threshold of the half-opened door, and ask if I might enter.
‘Come in, by all means,’ exclaimed Sir Harry. He was lying back indolently in his arm-chair beside a table strewn with books and papers,—a little flushed, perhaps, but otherwise himself, and, to my astonishment, quite alone. Yet I was positive that I had heard the unmistakable sound of a woman’s dress sweeping the carpet. Involuntarily I glanced around the room; but there was no egress.
Sir Harry caught my look of inquiry, and seemed annoyed. ‘What are you staring at, Wilmer?’ he demanded, in the curtest tone I had yet heard from him.
‘May I not glance round your den?’ I replied courteously. ‘I have not had the honour of seeing it before.’
Then I entered into a few details with him concerning the day’s sport we had enjoyed; but I took care to be brief, for I saw that my presence there displeased him, and I could not get the rustle of that dress out of my mind. As I concluded, and with some remark upon the lateness of the hour, turned to leave the room, a cough sounded from behind a large Indian screen which stood in one corner. It was the faintest, most subdued of coughs, but sufficiently tangible to be sworn to; and as it fell upon my ear I could not help a change of countenance.
‘All right!’ said my host, with affected nonchalance, as he rose and almost backed me to the door. ‘We’ll have a talk over all this after dinner, Wilmer; sorry I wasn’t with you; but, as you say, it’s late. Au revoir!’ and simultaneously the study door closed upon me.
I was very much startled and very much shocked. I had not a doubt that I was correct in my surmise that Sir Harry had some visitor in his room whom he had thought it necessary to conceal from me; and though Hope suggested that it might have been his wife, Common Sense rose up to refute so absurd an idea. Added to which, I had not traversed twenty yards after leaving him before I met Justina attired in her walking things, and just returning from a stroll round the garden.
‘Is it very late, uncle?’ she demanded, with a smile, as we encountered one another. ‘I have been out with the children. Have you seen Mary or Lady Amabel? I am afraid they will think I have neglected them shamefully this afternoon.’
I answered her questions indifferently, thinking the while that she had no occasion to blame herself for not having paid sufficient attention to Lady Amabel Scott, for that it was she whom I had surprised tête-à-tête with Sir Harry Trevor, I had not a shadow of doubt.