John Bradfield affected to start violently. He had had his cue.
“Deaf and dumb!” he exclaimed. “Are you sure? Surely Stelfox would have found it out. Unless, indeed, the cunning old rascal deceived me for fear of losing his place.”
And he affected to fall into a paroxysm of rage against the cunning man-servant.
“You do believe, do you not,” he went on, earnestly, “that I would have cut off my hand rather than commit such a shocking injustice as I seem to have done in all good faith?”
Chris was at first puzzled, and at last deceived by his vehemence. For the last argument he put forward was unanswerable.
“What,” said he, “had I to gain by it? He was the son of one of my oldest friends, and I should have liked nothing better than to treat him as my own. Now I understand the hatred the poor lad seemed to have for me. Of course I always took it for one of the signs of insanity in him.”
Insensibly Chris had allowed herself to be softened towards her companion, who had indeed succeeded in proving to her that she had most cruelly misjudged him.
He would have liked to prolong the drive, in order to enjoy as long as possible the sight of her pretty face, growing prettier under the influence of the gentle feeling of self-reproach for her treatment of him; but there was work too important to be done at home for him to dally with the precious moments.
On reaching Wyngham House, while Chris ran upstairs to her mother, Mr. Bradfield first informed himself of the whereabouts of the incubus, Marrable. On being informed that that gentleman had retired to his room to rest, as he generally did in the afternoon to digest a very heavy luncheon in slumber, the master of the house went upstairs, peeped in to see that his friend was really asleep, and then noiselessly locked him in, and went downstairs again. He knew that, if Gilbert Wryde’s son were really about, the young man would lose no time in making himself known to him. Then he went to his study, from the window of which, as it was in front of the house, he could keep watch.
As he had expected, it was not long before the swinging of the iron gates at the entrance of the drive informed him of the approach of the visitor. John took out the key of the cellarette he kept in his study, and helped himself to a wineglass of brandy.