She held out her hand with a gracious gesture. He took it reverently, bowing over it. She saw that he was too moved to speak. Placidly she continued:
“You look worn. Did you get any sleep last night?”
“I was busy with the books, my lady,” he replied evasively.
She sighed.
“I have not slept at all. Sir Geoffrey has asked me to see you first.” She hesitated for a moment, choosing her words slowly. “He has laid upon me a strange injunction.”
“Strange, my lady?”
“Yes. For the first time in my life, Ben, I shall try to obey not the spirit but the letter of that injunction. Please sit down! How tired you look!”
He sat down facing her with his back to the great chimney-piece. As he did so, she glanced at the only family portrait in the room, a picture which hung above the mantelpiece, a full-length likeness of Sir Rupert Pomfret, the Squire’s father, taken in hunting-kit. It had been painted shortly before his death, when he was still a young man. Lady Pomfret turned her eyes upon Fishpingle as she sat down upon the sofa.
She murmured almost to herself:
“It’s an extraordinary thing, Ben, but you have served the Pomfrets so long and faithfully that you have actually come to look like them.”