They filed out of the room: Flora first, with Madame Guise; Ethel and her stepmother following. The latter, who knew something of the Dobie family, at least by reputation, halted to exchange a few words with the representative of it as she passed him. To judge by her manner, it seemed that she had put no offensive construction on his address to her husband: and the probability was that she did not. Mrs. Castlemaine might have been less aware than anybody of the disagreeable rumours whispered in Greylands, tacitly if not openly connecting her husband with the doings of that ill-fated night: for who would be likely to speak of them to her?
Squire Dobie, remarking that he did not like to sit with his back to the fire passed round the table and took the chair vacated by Ethel. He was the second son of the old Squire Dobie, of Dobie Hall, a fine old place and property nearly on the confines of the county. In the years gone by, as he had phrased it, he and his elder brother, Tom the heir, had been very intimate with Basil Castlemaine. Separation soon came. Basil went off on his impromptu travels abroad--from which, as the reader knows, he never returned; Tom Dobie, the heir, remained with his father at the Hall, never marrying: Alfred, this younger son, married a Yorkshire heiress, and took up his abode on her broad acres. It has been mentioned that Tom Dobie kept up a private occasional correspondence with Basil Castlemaine, and knew where he was settled, but that has nothing to do with the present moment. Some two years ago Tom died. His father, the old Squire, survived him by a year: and at his death the Hall fell to Alfred, who became Squire in his turn: he who had now intruded on Mr. Castlemaine.
"No thank you; no wine," he said, as Mr. Castlemaine was putting the decanter towards him. "I never drink between my meals; and I've ordered my dinner for six o'clock at the Turk's Head. I await your explanation, James Castlemaine. What did you do with young Anthony?"
"May I ask whether Will Heyton told you I had done anything with him?" returned Mr. Castlemaine, in as sarcastic a tone as the very extreme limit of civility allowed him to use.
"No. Will Heyton simply said the young man had disappeared; that he had been seen to enter that queer place, the Friar's Keep, at midnight, with, or closely following upon the Master of Greylands. When I inquired whether the whether the Master of Greylands was supposed to have caused him to disappear, old Will simply shrugged his shoulders, and looked more innocent than a baby. The story affected me, James Castlemaine; I went out from the breakfast-table, calling here, calling there, upon the people I had formerly known in the town. I got talking of it with them all, and heard the same tale over and over again. None accused you, mind; but I gather what their thoughts were: that you must have had a personal hand in the disappearance of Anthony; or, at least, a personal knowledge of what became of him."
Mr. Castlemaine had listened in silence; perfectly unmoved. Squire Dobie regarded him keenly with his dark and searching eyes.
"I know but little of the matter; less, apparently, than you know," he quietly said. "I am ready to tell you what that little is--but it will not help you, Squire Dobie.
"What do you mean in saying less than I know?"
"Because I never was near the Friar's Keep at all on that night. Your informants, I presume, must have been, by their assuming to know so much."
"They know nothing. It is all conjecture."