“He wouldn’t have minded about any one else, Miss Denison: but it’s different with you.”
“Different—with me!” echoed the girl, very softly.
Without more words, Mrs. Warmington, after once more listening and glancing down into the hall to assure herself that they were not likely to be disturbed, crossed the landing on tiptoe, and beckoned Olivia to follow her. Then throwing open the door of one of the front bedrooms without noise, she said—
“That is Mr. Brander’s room. Do you see by his bedside a set of hanging shelves on the wall?”
“Yes.”
“And a box in the middle of the bottom shelf?”
As she spoke, the housekeeper was crossing the room. Taking down the box, she returned to the door with it, and, raising the lid, showed Olivia the tray of an old-fashioned workbox with well-worn fittings.
“It was his mother’s, I believe,” she whispered. Then, as the girl drew back, shocked at having been inveigled into prying among Mr. Brander’s treasures, she went on: “Have you ever seen this?” And lifting out the tray of the workbox, she thrust under Olivia’s reluctant but astonished eyes an indiarubber golosh, which Miss Denison instantly recognized as one she had lost on her way back from the Vicarage on the evening of her arrival at Rishton.
With a little cry of astonishment and annoyance, Olivia put out a hasty hand to recover her lost property. But Mrs. Warmington prevented her, shutting the box hastily, and restoring it to its place.
“I can’t take, or allow you to take, anything out of my employer’s boxes in his absence,” she said, drily.