Ernest stood with his tumbler arrested on the road to his mouth while he pondered over the matter.
“I don’t know,” he admitted finally. “I really can’t say. I left him here, working at Roger’s papers; and I told him I was going to Helen’s Bower. But when I came back again he wasn’t here. He’d put the papers away. I don’t know where he’d gone.”
“Ah, indeed?” said Sir Clinton ruminatively. But he made no further comment.
Chapter XI.
The Squire’s Theories
“We’ll have another look at the Maze, Squire, if you don’t mind stopping there.”
Wendover nodded. He had expected the suggestion.
“You didn’t seem to overflow with sympathy for Shandon,” he commented.
“Friend Ernest raises my gorge,” admitted Sir Clinton frankly. “Did you ever see a man in such a state? I never could stand that sort of thing.”
Then, as though he felt he had been too hard on Ernest, he added perfunctorily:
“Of course, he’d had rather a bad half hour of it.”