To all appearance it was exactly in the same condition in which George had left it, when he laid his mourning garments aside and placed them in this shabby repository with all other memorials of his dead wife. Robert brushed his coat sleeve across the worn, leather-covered lid, upon which the initials G. T. were inscribed with big brass-headed nails; but Mrs. Maloney, the laundress, must have been the most precise of housewives, for neither the portmanteau nor the trunk were dusty.
Mr. Audley dispatched a boy to fetch his Irish attendant, and paced up and down his sitting-room waiting anxiously for her arrival.
She came in about ten minutes, and, after expressing her delight in the return of "the master," humbly awaited his orders.
"I only sent for you to ask if anybody has been here; that is to say, if anybody has applied to you for the key of my rooms to-day—any lady?"
"Lady? No, indeed, yer honor; there's been no lady for the kay; barrin' it's the blacksmith."
"The blacksmith!"
"Yes; the blacksmith your honor ordered to come to-day."
"I order a blacksmith!" exclaimed Robert. "I left a bottle of French brandy in the cupboard," he thought, "and Mrs. M. has been evidently enjoying herself."
"Sure, and the blacksmith your honor tould to see to the locks," replied Mrs. Maloney. "It's him that lives down in one of the little streets by the bridge," she added, giving a very lucid description of the man's whereabouts.
Robert lifted his eyebrows in mute despair.