"We shall have much to talk about to-night, and I fancy we are all a good deal shaken. It's not often we receive a letter from a dead man, so we shall admit no callers to-night unless, indeed, Mr. Wiggins should chance to come," announced Miss Octavia. "The next time Hartley Wiggins visits this house he shall come as a conquering hero."
"I hope so," replied Cecilia brokenly.
We were still at dinner when the cards of Dick and the other suitors I had last seen at the Prescott Arms were brought in; but Wiggins made no sign, and I wondered.
XX
HEZEKIAH PARTITIONS THE KINGDOM
The man who looked after my needs handed me a note the next morning which added fresh hazards to Cecilia's already perilous plight.
"Left with the gardener before six o'clock by a boy from the village. Said it was most confidential, sir."
I waited till he had left the room before opening it. A square white envelope addressed to Arnold Ames, Esq., Hopefield Manor, told me nothing, and the handwriting was inscrutable. It slanted slightly upward; the small letters were half-printed and quaintly shaded. If a woman's, she had scorned the rail-fence models of the boarding-schools; if a man's—but I knew its gender well enough! The white note sheet within was unadorned, and the same pen had traced compactly, within the widest possible margins, the following:—
GOOSEBERRY BUNGALOW,
Before Breakfast.