I would have given a good deal to have been able to open the safe again if I had had the key with me and to see if it contained any further secrets, but this, for the present, was out of the question.
I had, however, the satisfaction of knowing that the place was well guarded, and was not likely to be interfered with perhaps for years. I went into the other rooms—the sergeant and his wife were occupying the kitchens—and found nothing there but dust. One or two were locked up, but it was perfectly impossible to see what was in them. An inspection of the keyholes revealed only darkness. I came down from the top storey with a sigh at its desolation.
I left the old place and walked rather sadly down the long street back to my hotel.
I wondered as I went what had become of the poor wounded old lady; whether she had died and her body was thrust away somewhere in hiding without Christian burial, or did she by some miracle still live? But this latter suggestion seemed an utter impossibility from the state in which I had left her. So I packed up, and on the next morning, with my two cousins, left the tower of Bath Abbey behind and started en route for Bannington Hall, the Mid Norfolk mansion of Lord St. Nivel.
The Vanboroughs were relatives of my mother's; she was one of that noble family, and the present peer's aunt. Dear soul, she had long since gone to her rest, following my father, the Chancery Judge, in about a year after his own demise.
The Vanboroughs were celebrated for their beauty, and my mother had been no exception to the rule. My rather stern, sad features had, I suppose, come from my father, but still I think I had my mother's eyes, and a look of her about the mouth when I smiled.
At least my cousin, Ethel Vanborough, said I had.
There was always something like home about dear old Bannington to me, with a sniff of the sea when you first stepped out of the carriage at the door.
The big comfortable old landau with its pair of strong horses had now, however, given place to a smart motor car, upholstered like a little drawing-room.
My cousin, Lord St. Nivel, was certainly fully up to date, and his sister, Lady Ethel, was, if possible, a little more so. They were twins. Left orphans as children, the two had grown up greatly attached to one another naturally, and being the sole survivors of a very rich family and inheriting all its savings and residues, they had an extremely good time of it together without any great desire to exchange their happy brother and sisterhood for the bonds of matrimony. Still they were very young, being only four-and-twenty.