T was a long time before the house in Eaton Square in any way recovered its former appearance. Captain Bayley had lost much of his life and vivacity, and, as the servants remarked to each other, nothing seemed to put him out. He went for his morning ride in the Park, or his afternoon visit to the Club, as usual, but his thoughts seemed far away; he passed old friends without seeing them, and if stopped he greeted them no longer with a cheery ring in his voice, or a quick smile of welcome. Every one who knew him remarked that Bayley was going down hill terribly fast, and was becoming a perfect wreck.
Frank's name was never now mentioned in the house. Its utterance had not been forbidden, but it had been dropped as a matter concerning which a hopeless disagreement existed. Alice had changed almost as much as her uncle. Her spirits were gone; her voice was no longer heard singing about the house; she no longer ran up and down the stairs with quick springing footsteps, and indeed seemed all at once to have changed from a young girl into a young woman. Sometimes, as she sat, the tears filled her eyes and rolled fast down her cheeks; at other times she would walk about with her eyebrows knitted, and hands clenched, and lips pursed together, a little volcano of suppressed anger.
Although no discussion on the subject had taken place between her and her guardian, it was an understood thing that she maintained her opinion, and that she regarded Fred Barkley as an enemy. If she happened to be in the room when he was announced, she would rise and leave it without a word; if he remained to a meal, she would not make her appearance in the dining or drawing rooms.
"Alice still regards me as the incarnation of evil," Fred said, with a forced laugh, upon one of those occasions.
"The child is a trump," Captain Bayley said warmly, "a warm lover and a good hater. What a thing it is," he said, with a sigh, "to be at an age when trust and confidence are unshakable, and when nothing will persuade you that what you wish to believe is not right; what would I not give for that child's power of trust?"
The household in Eaton Square were almost unanimous in Frank's favour. His genial, hearty manners rendered him a universal favourite with the servants; and although none knew the causes of Frank's sudden disappearance, the general opinion was that, whatever had happened, he could not have been to blame in the matter.
His warmest adherent was Evan Holl, who had months before been introduced to the house as assistant knife and boot cleaner by Frank. He did not sleep there, going home at nine o'clock in the evening when his work was done.
"Do you know, Harry," he said, one day, "what a rum crest, as they calls it,—I asked the butler what it meant, and he says as how it was the crest of the family—Captain Bayley has; he's got it on his silver, and I noticed it when I was in the pantry to-day helping the butler to clean some silver dishes which had been lying by unused for some time. 'All families of distinction,' the butler said,—he is mighty fond of using hard long words—'all families of distinction,' says he, ''as got their own crest, which belongs to them and no one else. Now this 'ere crest of the guv'nor's is a hand holding a dagger, and the hand has only got three fingers.' I said as how there was two missing, and that the chap as did it couldn't have known much of his business to go and leave out two fingers. But the butler says, 'That's your hignorance,' says he; 'the hand 'as got only three fingers because a hancestor of the Captain's in the time of the Crusaders'—— 'And what's the Crusaders?' says I. 'The Crusaders was a war between the English and the Americans hundreds of years ago,' says he."
Harry burst into a shout of laughter. "Mr. Butler does not know anything about it, for the Crusades were wars between people who went out to the Holy Land to recover the Holy Sepulchre from the Turks who held it."
"Ah, well," Evan said, "it don't make no odds whether they was Turks or Americans. However, the butler says as how the Captain Bayley what lived in those days, he saw a red Injun a-crawling to stab the king, who was a-lying asleep in his tent, and just as his hand was up to stick in the knife, Captain Bayley he gives a cut with his sword which whips off two of the fingers, and before the Injun could turn round and go at him he gives another cut, and takes off his hand at the wrist, and the next cut he takes off his head; so the hand with three fingers holding a dagger was given him to carry as a crest. I suppose after a time the hand got wore out, or got bad, so as he couldn't have carried it about no longer, and instead of that, as a kind of remembrance of the affair, he 'as them put on his forks and spoons."