"Stop! stop! my good fellow," cried the governor, "you don't stir a step. Take care of these good fellows, constable, while I go in. I must intrude upon the ladies at all risks. Is that the drawing-room door?"
"No, sir," replied the butler, "that's the anteroom door, but it leads to the drawing-room. Go if you like, you'll only be thought a saucy companion for your pains; and if my mistress blames me, it's not my fault, you know."
Without making any reply, the governor walked straight forward and threw open the anteroom door. The door beyond was partly open, so that he could see into the drawing-room at once, and there was no possibility of anybody in it making their escape without being perceived. There, however, sat Everard Morrison alone at the table, with half a dozen large law papers spread all over it, the pen in his hand, the abstract he was making lying before him, and the ink still wet upon three or four lines preceding.
As the governor entered, he lifted up his head to see who it was; but his countenance betrayed nothing which could excite suspicion. The whole appearance of the room, and of the young lawyer himself, was so natural, and so little calculated to awaken or confirm suspicion, that the governor at once began to fear he had been misled, especially as he had been guided in that direction principally by his own suspicions.
It was necessary, however, to say something on the occasion, and he, therefore, burst forth, saying,
"Very pretty this, Mister Morrison, very pretty this."
"What do you mean, governor?" said Morrison, in his usual calm tone. "What is very pretty? I don't understand you."
"Why here you send a woman to me," said the governor, "asking admission to Sir Charles Tyrrell, and giving me to understand that it is Miss Effingham, and she turns out no such person, and lets him get out in her cloak."
"I never gave you to understand that it was Miss Effingham," cried the young lawyer; "quite on the contrary; in my note to you, I told you I did not know who she was. I wrote in a great hurry, as I had to come here to-night; but I took care to tell you that, I am sure. If it had been either Mrs. or Miss Effingham, they would have come to me of course, and I should have put their names down in the note. But I took especial pains, on the contrary, to say that the lady who had written to me, was at the inn, and that I could not tell who she was, in order that you might act upon your own responsibility."
"Precious responsibility business I seem to have made of it," said the governor. "Why I shall be turned out of my post."