If Lizzy Dene had but known how entirely the poor ghost had gone out of the world for ever! Would Chandos ever lose its belief in it?
"I have told you this, Miss, because I thought you seemed to suspect me; and I didn't deserve it. I'm true to the family, to the backbone, Miss; and so I always will be. My lady has confidence in me; she has known me a long while."
The explanation over, Lizzy Dene left me. I crossed the hall to enter the oak-parlour just in time to see Hickens open the front door to a visitor, and to hear a colloquy. My heart seemed to shrink within me at the voice, for it was Mr. Edwin Barley's. What could have brought him to the house, boldly inquiring for its inmates?
It appeared that Mrs. Penn, on her stealthy visit to his house that morning, had not seen him. Upon inquiring for Mr. Barley she was told he had gone out betimes, shooting. The information took her aback. Go out shooting, when his enemy, for whom he had been searching night and day these ten years, was found to be close at hand, waiting to be apprehended! And she forthwith accused the footman of not delivering to his master the note left at the house the previous night, upon which she had the pleasure of hearing that the note was duly delivered to Mr. Edwin Barley, and turned out to be a circular of the fashions. All she could do then was to write a few lines, giving him the information about George Heneage, with a charge that it should be put into Mr. Barley's hands the instant he set foot in the house. But Mr. Barley did not return to it quickly. The birds were shy that day.
Later, when he was at length going home, his gun in one hand and a brace of pheasants in the other, he encountered a procession. Turning out at the lodge-gates came Mrs. Penn, one policeman walking by her side, another behind; and, following on, Mrs. Penn's luggage in a truck propelled by a man in the Chandos livery. Mr. Edwin Barley naturally stopped; although he had not been on good terms with Mrs. Penn for some years; and inquired the meaning of what he saw.
"You are the only relative I have left in the world, Mr. Edwin Barley; will you, as such, suffer this indignity to be put upon me?" were the first words she spoke. And he, thus called upon, turned in his haughty, menacing manner on the officers. She was his relative, as she said, and he possessed some right feeling.
"What is the meaning of this? Unhand the lady! Why are you guarding her in that offensive manner?"
"We have orders, sir, to see the lady safely away from Chandos."
"Who gave you the orders?"
"Mr. Chandos."