Kate looked hard at her sister, and then edged her footstool close up to her side.
“Betty,” she whispered, with a very curious expression, “did you ever notice the extraordinary likeness there is between Mr. Goodhare and—papa?”
“Nonsense, child,” said Lady Elizabeth, blushing violently, and trying to rise.
But Lady Kate, who was a sturdily built girl, with little fat, but muscular hands, held her down.
“Of course, he looks much older, because he doesn’t dye his hair and mustache, as papa does, and because he wears a beard. But really, do you know, Betty, I’ve sometimes thought——”
But here Lady Elizabeth, who was also a robust young woman, disengaged herself, with no great gentleness, from her sister’s clasp, and with an almost frightened, “Hush, Kitty, hush; you mustn’t let your tongue run on so,” left her to form her own opinion on the subject of this sudden closure of the discussion.
Lady Kate mused for some time on this point, until at length it occurred to her to get a peep at Mr. Goodhare by the light of her new suspicions. She knew where he was to be found, for, to do him justice, the librarian loved his books, and appeared to live for nothing else. He had lately been employed in collecting papers and documents and books of reference bearing on the history of Carstow Castle, of which most interesting ruin Lady Marion proposed to compile an exhaustive chronicle.
No subject more fascinating could well have been chosen. The old place, after having suffered many vicissitudes of fortune under Plantagenets and Tudors, had been almost destroyed during the Great Rebellion, when it was held for King Charles by a brave little garrison, who did not surrender until all hope of escape had been cut off by a fearless Puritan soldier. Swimming across the river with a knife in his mouth, he cut adrift the boat on which the defenders of the castle counted for their flight. Some years later a tower of the desolated castle was patched up into a prison for one of the “regicides,” who passed there a pleasantly mitigated captivity, and was buried in the churchyard of the quiet little old town.
From these events Lady Marion had determined to construct a strictly impartial chronicle, which should, however, illustrate in a marked manner her own strictly impartial views on the subject of hereditary monarchy and the powers of Parliament. Therefore, Amos Goodhare, the librarian, had been for the past few weeks employed in digging out, from the vast hoards of accumulated records of the past with which not only the library, but various corners of roomy Llancader were filled, such documents as seemed likely to be of use to the young lady in her vast undertaking.
It was among the nooks and crannies of the castle, therefore, that Lady Kate set about her search for the librarian; and it was in one of the dustiest corners of a scarcely used wing of the building that, after a long hunt, she found him.