Freda was startled by this suggestion, which betrayed how much the young man knew or guessed. She turned from the door, where she had paused with her fingers on the handle.
“Oh, yes,” he said in a low voice and very quickly, understanding her thought, “it did take me in, for a time, and my cousin Bob too, that story about his being dead, although we both knew him very well.”
“But why should he pretend any such thing?”
“That’s what we want to find out. It makes us careful. So Bob’s gone away, and I keep watch.”
“And you are so sure he is alive?”
“I’ve seen him.”
Freda began to tremble. Here was an answer to the question she had so often asked herself, whether her father was not really in hiding about the place after all. She led the way out of the library, along the corridor and out into the courtyard by the nearest door, without a word. It was so dark that there was little fear of their being seen crossing to the gate; though indeed Freda had forgotten that there was need of caution, being absorbed in conjectures about her father. She took the big key from its nail, opened the heavy gate, and led Dick through to the open space before the blank wall of the banqueting-hall. They crossed this, still in silence, and came to the lodge. Here she was about to summon the lodge-keeper, when Dick stopped her.
“Don’t,” said he. “The old woman would recognise me, and you would be made to suffer. I must get out some other way.”
“There is no other way,” said Freda. “And when my friends come to see me they should go out by the front way.”
And, before he could stop her, she had seized the iron bell-handle which hung outside the wall of the lodge and rang it firmly.