She laughed.
“Bachelorhood isn’t peace; it’s desolation!” she declared. “I’m sure he’s lonely in that big house. What was that he said about expecting you to-night?”
“I’m going to call round after dinner and get hold of some facts on Cornish history,” I said evasively.
I hadn’t the faintest notion as to what I expected to learn from him, but the moment he had said he knew Anthony Pendennis the thought flashed to my mind that he might be able to give me some clue to the mystery that enveloped Anne and her father; and that might help me to shape my plans.
I would, of course, have to tell him the reason for my inquiries, and convince him that they were not prompted by mere curiosity. I was filled with a queer sense of suppressed excitement as I walked briskly up the steep lane and through the churchyard,—ghostly looking in the moonlight,—which was the shortest way to the vicarage, a picturesque old house that Mary and I had already viewed from the outside, and judged to be Jacobean in period. As I was shown into a low-ceiled room, panelled and furnished with black oak, where the vicar sat beside a log fire, blazing cheerily in the great open fireplace, I felt as if I’d been transported back to the seventeenth century. The only anachronisms were my host’s costume and my own, and the box of cigars on the table beside him, companioning a decanter of wine and a couple of tall, slender glasses that would have rejoiced a connoisseur’s heart.
Mr. Treherne welcomed me genially.
“You won’t find the fire too much? There are very few nights in our West Country, here by the sea at any rate, when a fire isn’t a comfort after sunset; a companion, too, for a lonely man, eh? It’s very good of you to come round to-night, Mr. Wynn. I have very few visitors, as you may imagine. And so you have met my old friend, Anthony Pendennis?”
I was thankful of the opening he afforded me, and answered promptly.
“Yes; but only once, and in an extraordinary way. I’ll tell you all about it, Mr. Treherne; and in return I ask you to give me every bit of information you may possess about him. I shall respect your confidence, as, I am sure, you will respect mine.”
“Most certainly I shall do that, Mr. Wynn,” he said with quiet emphasis, and forthwith I plunged into my story, refraining only from any allusion to Anne’s connection with Cassavetti’s murder. That, I was determined, I would never mention to any living soul; determined also to deny it pointblank if any one should suggest it to me.