“Between fifteen and sixteen years,” answered Barthorpe.
“Did Jacob Herapath take you into his house?” asked Burchill, continuing the examination which Barthorpe was beginning to find irksome as well as puzzling. “I’m asking all this for good reasons—it’s necessary, if you’re to understand what I’m going to tell you.”
“Oh, as long as you’re going to tell me something I don’t mind telling you anything you like to ask,” replied Barthorpe. “That’s what I want to be getting at. No—he didn’t take me into the house. But he gave me a very good allowance, paid all my expenses until I got through my remaining examinations and stages, and was very decent all around. No—I fixed up in the rooms which I’ve still got—a flat in the Adelphi.”
“But you went a good deal to Portman Square?”
“Why, yes, a good deal—once or twice a week, as a rule.”
“Had your cousin—Miss Wynne—come there then?”
“Yes, she’d just about come. I remember she had a governess. Of course, Peggie was a mere child then—about five or six. Must have been six, because she’s quite twenty-one now.”
“And—Mr. Tertius?”
Burchill spoke the name with a good deal of subtle meaning, and Barthorpe suddenly looked at him with a rising comprehension.
“Tertius?” he answered. “No—Tertius hadn’t arrived on the scene then. He came—soon after.”