Still pondering sadly over these and kindred subjects Peggie went upstairs to a parlour of her own, a room in which she did as she liked and made into a den after her own taste. There, while the November afternoon deepened in shadow, she sat and thought still more deeply. And she was still plunged in thought when Kitteridge came softly into the room and presented a card. Peggie took it from the butler’s salver and glanced half carelessly at it. Then she looked at Kitteridge with some concern.
“Mr. Burchill?” she said. “Here?”
“No, miss,” answered Kitteridge. “Mr. Burchill desired me to present his most respectful sympathy, and to say that if he could be of any service to you or to the family, he begged that you would command him. His address is on this card, miss.”
“Very kind of him,” murmured Peggie, and laid the card aside on her writing-table. When Kitteridge had gone she picked it up and looked at it again. Burchill?—she had been thinking of him only a few minutes before the butler’s entrance; thinking a good deal. And her thoughts had been disquieted and unhappy. Burchill was the last man in the world that she wished to have anything to do with, and the fact that his name appeared on Jacob Herapath’s will had disturbed her more than she would have cared to admit.
CHAPTER XI
the shadow
Mr. Halfpenny, conducting Mr. Tertius to the coupé brougham, installed him in its further corner, got in himself and bade his coachman drive slowly to 331, Upper Seymour Street.