They soon overtook Mrs. Carlyon, who gladly agreed to the plan, and thanked Mr. Winter warmly, and soon after that they parted.
It was with very varied feelings that they all climbed the cliff the next day to Mr. Winter’s home, and walked slowly up the pebbled path. Geoffrey was full of curiosity and interest; Loveday was a little shy of again entering her prison, but interested too; Mrs. Carlyon was very thankful, and in her heart very glad, for it seemed to her that it might be the beginning of brighter, happier days for the poor, lonely, sad old man; Priscilla, too, dimly felt the same thing, and she wanted, oh, so much! that he should be less sad.
Mrs. Tucker let them in, glum as usual, but more civil in manner.
“Will you please to walk inside and sit down,” she said, showing them into a little bare room where there was no sign of any preparations for tea, no flowers, nor even chairs enough for them all. “The master will be here in a moment.”
And in less than a moment he came in.
As soon as their eyes fell on him standing in the doorway, two at least of them—Priscilla and her mother—noticed a change in him; they could not have said whether they saw or felt it, or in what the change lay, and when he came forward to shake hands he seemed only a little quieter, a little more sad than usual, and somewhat more absent-minded. He welcomed them very cordially, but after the first greetings a silence fell, then:
“Will you come this way?” he said, rising and moving towards the door. He spoke in a nervous, strained manner. “I have had tea laid in the—the drawing-room. It is a room I do not often use.” As they rose to follow him he laid his hand on Priscilla’s shoulder. “May Miss Priscilla and I lead the way?” he asked.
It was a curiously silent little procession that straggled from the one room to the other—Mrs. Carlyon full of surmise as to what was to follow, Geoffrey and Loveday too absorbed in interest at being in the house of mystery, as they had always considered it, to notice anything unusual.
But as soon as the drawing-room door was opened, Mrs. Carlyon began to understand. “This is one of the closed rooms, and for us he has at last opened it,” she thought; and once more a deep pang of tender pity filled her heart.