“You don’t know where he has gone, Mr Ellis?”
“No,” said the bailiff shortly.
“No; I thought you said so. Poor chap! I did everything I could to make matters easy for him, and selected little jobs that I thought he could do; but, of course, he would not take to them happily. He felt it hard to have to take his orders from me, and very naturally, for he expected to be head-gardener, and would have been, eh, Mr Ellis?”
“Yes,” grunted the bailiff.
“To be sure he would. I’m not such a donkey as to suppose I should have got the place if he had been all right. I’m a good gardener, though I say it as shouldn’t say it, Miss Mary; but there were lots of little dodges about flowers where he could beat me hollow. Ha, ha, ha!” he laughed, “I wouldn’t say that before the men, but I don’t mind here.”
“Is Mr Grange bad again?” asked Mrs Ellis, unable to restrain her curiosity.
“Bad, ma’am? Well, of course he’s bad; but no worse than usual. You know, I suppose, that he’s gone away?”
“I? No.”
“Oh, yes, quite mysterious like; never said good-bye to a soul.”
“But me,” thought Mary, with a sensation as of something clutching her heart, as she recalled that night at her bedroom window.