The man was an old servant, and altogether a superior person.
“Were the gates locked at the usual time on Friday night?”
“Yes, my Lord—the gates were locked, but that wouldn’t keep out a foot-passenger. There’s the turnstile in the lane.”
“Of course. Yes, yes. A London detective has been at work, I hear.”
“Yes, my Lord; came yesterday before two o’clock, and has been about with Barber ever since.”
“And have they discovered nothing?”
“Nothing, my Lord—or if they have it has been kept dark.”
Lord Cheriton asked no further questions. The man was right. A detective from Scotland Yard was not likely to talk about any minor discoveries that he might have made. Only the one grand discovery of the guilty man would have been made known.
Five minutes later the carriage drew up in front of the hall door. What a blank and melancholy look the fine old house had with all the windows darkened. It did not look so dismal as a London house with its level rows of windows and its flat façade would have looked under similar conditions; for here there was variety of mullion and moulding, bay-windows and oriel, dormer and lattice, and over all the growth of lovely creeping plants, starry clematis and passion-flower, clustering Banksia roses and waxen magnolia, an infinite beauty of form and colour. Yet the blind windows were there, with their dull, dead look and chilling suggestion of death. Lady Cheriton looked at the house for a moment or so as she got out of the carriage, and then burst into tears. It seemed to her as if she had scarcely realized the stern reality till that moment.
She went straight to her daughter’s boudoir, a room with an oriel window looking across the wide expanse of the park, where the turf lay openest to the sunshine, and where the deer were wont to congregate. The garden was at its narrowest point just below this window, and consisted only of a broad gravel path, and a strip of flowers at the top of a steep grass bank that sloped down to the ha-ha which divided garden and park. The room was full of Juanita’s girlish treasures—evidences of fancies that had passed like summer clouds—accomplishments begun and abandoned—a zither in one corner—a guitar and a mandolin against the wall—an easel in front of one window—a gigantic rush work-basket lined with amber satin and crammed with all manner of silks, wools, scraps, and unfinished undertakings in another. The room remained just as she had left it when she went to London at the beginning of May. She had not occupied it during her honeymoon; and perhaps that was the reason she was here now in her desolation, sitting silent, statue-like, with Lady Jane by her side, on a sofa opposite the oriel. She lifted her eyelids when her mother came into the room, and looked up at her in speechless despair. She uttered no word of greeting, but sat dumbly. Lady Cheriton went over to her, and knelt by her side, and then, feebly, automatically, the widowed girl put her limp, cold hand into her mother’s and hid her bloodless face upon her mother’s breast.