“Theodore has exaggerated the significance of my remark,” explained Cuthbert. “I take it Mrs. Porter’s case is one of slight aberration brought on by much brooding upon troubles, real or imaginary. If my power to diagnose is worth anything, her mind has lost its balance, her thoughts have lost their adjusting power. She is like a piece of mechanism that has got out of square, and will only work one way. You may hardly consider that this amounts to madness, and I may have done wrong in speaking of it: only were Mrs. Porter concerned in my existence, I should feel it incumbent on me to watch her; and I recommend you to have her watched, so far as it can be done without alarming or annoying her.”
“I will do what I can. I will get another opinion from a man of long experience in mental cases. I have an old friend in the medical profession, a specialist, who has made mental disease the study of his life. He will give me any advice I want.”
“You cannot do better than get his opinion of Mrs. Porter, if you are interested in her welfare.”
“I am interested in all who are dependent upon me, and in her especially, on account of old associations.”
Lady Carmichael drove over to Cheriton after luncheon, upon one of those Sunday visits which she paid from time to time in deference to her father, albeit she could never approach the house without pain. She came in the useful family landau, which had carried the Misses Carmichael to tennis parties, dinners, and dances, before they married, and which now conveyed the nurse and baby on their visits to Cheriton. She came for what Lady Cheriton called a long afternoon, and she was received in the library, which was now the most used room in the house. No one cared to occupy that fatal drawing-room; and although it was always accessible, and there was a feint of daily occupation, its cold elegance was for the most part untenanted.
“And over all there hung a cloud of fear.”
To-day, for the first time, Theodore discovered numerous alterations in the arrangement of pictures and furniture in the hall. He had promised Cuthbert to show him the portraits of the Strangways, and most particularly that picture of the Squire’s three children, painted nearly forty years before; but he found that this picture, among others, had been removed, and that a fine Rhodian plate occupied its place on the dark oak panelling.
He noticed the fact to his cousin.
“I am sorry to miss the family group,” he said. “It was a really interesting picture.”