"Mr. Richards is an invalid; he is unable to see any one, or quit his room. What mystery is there in that?"
"There's a mystery somewhere," said Rose, sagaciously. "Who is Mr. Richards?"
"A friend of papa's—and poor. Don't ask so many questions, Rose. I have nothing more to say on the subject."
"Then I must find out for myself—that is all," thought Rose; "and I will, too, before long, in spite of half a dozen Ogdens."
Rose tried with a zeal and perseverance worthy a better cause, and most signally failed. Mr. Richards was invisible. His meals went up daily. Ogden and Kate visited him daily, but the baize door was always locked, and Ogden and Kate, on the subject, were dumb. Kate visited the invalid at all hours, by night and by day. Ogden rarely left him except when Miss Danton was there, and then he took a little airing in the garden. Rose's room was near the corridor leading to the green baize room; and often awaking "in the dead waste and middle of the night," she would steal to that mysterious room to listen. But nothing was ever to be heard, nothing ever to be seen—the mystery was fathomless. She would wander outside at all hours, under Mr. Richards' window; and looking up, wonder how he endured his prison, or what he could possibly be about—if those dark curtains were never raised and he never looked at the outer world. Once or twice a face had appeared, but it was always the keen, thin face of Mr. Ogden; and Rose's curiosity, growing by what it fed on, began to get insupportable.
"What can it mean, Grace?" she would say to the housekeeper, to whom she had a fashion, despite no end of snubbing, of confiding her secret troubles. "There's something wrong; where there's secrecy, there's guilt—I've always heard that."
"Don't jump at conclusions, Miss Rose, and don't trouble yourself about Mr. Richards; it is no affair of yours."
"But I can't help troubling myself. What business have papa, and Kate, and that nasty Ogden, to have a secret between them and I not know it? I feel insulted, and I'll have revenge. I never mean to stop till I ferret out the mystery. I have the strongest conviction I was born to be a member of the detective police, and one of these days the mystery of Mr. Richards will be a mystery no more."
Grace had her own suspicions, but Grace was famous for minding her own business, and kept her suspicions to herself. Rose's man[oe]uvring amused her, and she let her go on. Every strategy the young lady could conceive was brought to bear, and every stratagem was skilfully baffled.
"Why don't you have Doctor Danton to see Mr. Richards, Kate?" she said to her sister, one evening, meeting her coming out of Mr. Richards' room. "I should think he was skilful."