“Left for good, I suppose?” I said.
“For the present, at any rate. A pressing matter of business recalled him, and he had to attend to it without delay.”
I glanced at Katrine: there was the explanation.
“So the dog is at Evesham!” remarked Mr. Barbary. “The Standishes are great rogues, all three of them, and Dick’s the worst. But—I think—had you gone after him to-day, instead of delaying it until to-morrow, there might have been more certainty of finding him. Mr. Dick may give you leg-bail in the night.”
“The police will see he does not do that; the Squire has sent a messenger to warn them,” I replied. “I suppose you have not heard any more rumours about the poaching on Tuesday night, Mr. Barbary?”
“I’ve heard no more than was said at first—that the keepers reported some poachers were out, and they nearly came to an encounter with the rascals. Wish they had—and that I had seen the fun. Reste and I had walked to Church Leet and back that day; we were both tired and went upstairs betimes.”
To hear him coolly assert this, to see his good-looking face raised unblushingly to the sun as he said it, must have been as a bitter farce to Katrine, who had believed him, until a few days back, to be next door to a saint for truth and goodness. I put faith in it, not being then behind the scenes.
Mr. Barbary did his packing leisurely. Tea was over, and dusk set in before the portmanteau was shut up and its direction fastened to it. Katrine read the card. “Edgar Reste, Esq., Euston Square Station, London. To be left till called for.”
Very lonely felt Katrine, sitting by herself that evening, working a strip of muslin for a frill. He was not there to talk to her in his voice of music—for that’s what she had grown to think it, like other girls in love. She wondered whether they should ever meet again—ever, ever? She wondered how long it would be before a letter came from him, and whether he would write to her.
Mr. Barbary appeared at supper-time, ate some cold lamb in silence, seeming to be buried in thought, and went back to the gun-room when he had finished. Katrine got to her work again, did a little, then put it away for the night, and turned to the book-shelf to get a book.