The young baronet's face changed.
"The devil! Gone! Explain yourself, sir."
The man had swung round so that he faced Lord Cornbury, with his head screwed oddly over his right shoulder. As he spoke it bobbed in a kind of palsied eagerness.
"You know her, my lord. Miss Claudia Grevel; the cousin and housemate of the young heir of Chastlecote, who has been committed to my charge. Three days ago she was of age and the controller of her fortune. This morning the maids found her bed unslept in, and the lady flown."
Lord Cornbury exclaimed. "Did she leave no word?" he asked.
"Only a letter to her cousin, bidding him farewell."
"Nothing to you?"
"To me nothing. She was a high lady and to her I was only the boy's instructor. But I had marked for some weeks a restlessness in her deportment and, fearing some rash step, I had kept an eye on her doings."
"You spied on her?" said Kyd sweetly. "Is that part of an usher's duties?"
The man was too earnest to feel the rudeness of the question.