"Go down, dear, to your company," resumed Lady Alice, sadly; "they will miss you. And tell your father, when he comes to the drawing-room, I wish to see him, and won't detain him long."
So they parted, and a little later Sir Jekyl arrived with a knock at the old lady's bed-room door.
"Come in—oh! yes—Jekyl—well, I've only a word to say. Sit down a moment at the bedside."
"And how do you feel now, you dear old soul?" inquired the Baronet, cheerfully. He looked strong and florid, as gentleman do after dinner, with a genial air of contentment, and a fragrance of his wonderful sherry about him; all which seemed somehow brutal to the nervous old lady.
"Wonderfully, considering the surprise you had prepared for me, and which might as well have killed me as not," she made answer.
"I know, to be sure—Strangways, you mean. Egad! I forgot. Trixie ought to have told you."
"You ought to have told me. I don't think I should have come here, Jekyl, had I known it."
"If I had known that," thought Sir Jekyl, with a regretful pang, "I'd have made a point of telling you." But he said aloud—
"Yes. It was a sottise; but I've got over the likeness so completely that I forgot how it agitated you. But I ought to tell you they have no connexion with the family—none in the world. Pelter and Crowe, you know—devilish sharp dogs—my lawyers in town—they are regular detectives, by Jove! and know everything—and particularly have had for years a steady eye upon them and their movements; and I have had a most decided letter from them, assuring me that there has not been the slightest movement in that quarter, and therefore there is, absolutely, as I told you from the first, nothing in it."
"And what Deverells are now living?" inquired the old lady, very pale.