"Not at all," said Peter. "It was our Mr. Flinders who thought he ought to be watched. All very providential."
"Well, if he discovers anything against the old boy, I'll eat my hat," the Colonel declared.
Shortly after eleven he took his leave of them, and in a little while the girls and Mrs. Bosanquet went up to bed. Having bolted the drawing-room windows, the men prepared to follow them, and in another hour the house was dark and silent.
Mrs. Bosanquet, who had been troubled lately with slight insomnia, was the only one of the party who failed to go to sleep. After lying awake for what seemed to her an interminable time she decided that the room was stuffy, and got up to open the window, which she still kept shut in case anyone should attempt to effect an entrance by that way. "But that is all put a stop to now," she told herself, as she climbed back into bed.
The opening of the window seemed to make matters worse. At the end of another twenty minutes sleep seemed farther off than ever. Mrs. Bosanquet felt for the matches on the table beside her bed, and lit her candle. She looked round for something to read, but since she was not in the habit of reading in bed there were no books in the room. It at once seemed to her imperative that she should read for a while, and she sat up, debating whether she should venture down to the library in search of a suitable book, or whether this simple act demanded more courage than she possessed. There was a tin of sweet biscuits in the library, she remembered, and the recollection made her realise that she was quite hungry. "Now I come to think of it," Mrs. Bosanquet informed the bedpost, "my dear mother used always to say that if one could not sleep it was a good plan to eat a biscuit. Though," she added conscientiously, "she did not in general approve of eating anything once one had brushed one's teeth for the night."
The tin of biscuits began to seem more and more desirable. Mrs. Bosanquet lay down again, sternly resolved to think of something else. But it was no use. Biscuits, very crisp and sweet, would not be banished from her mind, and at the end of another ten minutes Mrs. Bosanquet would have faced untold dangers to get one.
She got out of bed and put on her dressing-gown. It occurred to her that she might wake Peter, whose room was opposite hers, and ask him to go down to the library for her, but she dismissed this pusillanimous idea at once. Mrs. Bosanquet was a lady who prided herself upon her level-headedness; she did not believe in ghosts; and she would feel very much ashamed to think that anyone should suspect her of being too nervous to walk downstairs alone in the middle of the night.
"Nerves," Mrs. Bosanquet was in the habit of saying severely, "were never encouraged when I was young."
"I shall go quietly downstairs, get a biscuit to eat, and select a book from the shelves without disturbing anyone," she said firmly, and picked up her candle.
The lamp had been turned out in the passage, and since there was no moon the darkness seemed intense. Another woman might have paused, but Mrs. Bosanquet was not afraid of the dark. "What would alarm me," she reflected, "would be a light burning; for then I should know that someone was in the house."