“All that you have done is perfectly right, and always will be, in my eyes; so you need never fear what I may say to you, child. Have you any more news? I want to hear all about Sarah’s accident, and whether you were very much alarmed when you heard about the robbery at Denham Court.”
“I have a lot to tell you,” I said hesitatingly; “but I won’t tell you any of it to-night, Mr. Rayner, because it is all bad, miserable news, and I won’t spoil your first evening. It is bad enough to come back to a house as full of invalids as a hospital. But it will all come right again now you are back.”
Mr. Rayner laughed, and seemed much pleased. He put his hand on mine, which was lying on the table, and looked into my face very kindly indeed.
“Do you think so, my child? Are you so glad to see me again?”
“Yes, indeed I am. You can’t think how dull the place is when you are away. There is nobody to talk or laugh, and one creeps about the house as if one were in a Trappist monastery, and didn’t dare to break the sacred silence.”
“Thanks, my child; that is the very prettiest welcome home I have had for—years,” said he, with much feeling in his voice.
And he kept me a long time chatting to him and listening to his account of what he had seen in London, until at last I grew very sleepy while he finished the story of his adventures; and I said I must really go to bed, or I should never be able to get up in time for breakfast. As it was, the clock struck eleven before I went upstairs.
The next morning at breakfast the talk was chiefly about the robbery at Denham Court. Mr. Rayner had read the accounts of it in the newspapers, besides the bare mention of it I had made in my letter to him; but now he wanted to hear all we had heard, and whether we were very much alarmed by it. Mrs. Rayner said very little, as usual; and I only told him Mr. Carruthers’s story, reserving the suspicious things I had seen for when I should be able to talk to him alone. The opportunity soon came.
I went into the schoolroom after breakfast, thinking I would employ the hour and a half there was to spare before church-time in just beginning my letter to Laurence. But I had not got beyond “My own dearest Lau—” when Mr. Rayner came in and smiled in a mischievous manner that brought the color into my cheeks when he saw what I was doing. I put away my letter at once, so I do not know how he guessed to whom I was writing.
“Am I disturbing you?” said he.