Lonely, dispirited, unusually low, felt she this afternoon. Mr. Lake had gone over in the morning to Katterley to see how their house was progressing, and she began to wonder that he was not back. They had taken dinner early that day, and Lady Ellis had disappeared after it. When Mr. Lake was away she would invariably go up to her room after dinner, saying she had letters to write. Shrewd Fanny Chester, taking after her quick mother, said my lady went up to get a nap, not to write. Mrs. Chester was in the nursery, where she had a dressmaker at work, making clothes for her children; Anna was helping; and Clara was alone.
It may as well be mentioned that the mystery attaching to the cause of the railway accident had not been solved yet. The coroner and jury had met regularly once a fortnight since, and as regularly adjourned the inquest. In the teeth of Colonel West's most positive testimony, it was impossible to bring in a verdict against Cooper, the driver; in the teeth of Oliver Jupp's, it was equally impossible to exonerate him. No other witnesses, save the parties interested, appeared to have seen the lights that night. The public were fairly nonplussed, the coroner and jury sick to death of the affair. The young person now working for Mrs. Chester was Cooper's sister.
The red embers were fading down nearly to blackness, when Fanny Chester came bursting into the room to Clara in her rather boisterous manner. Clara aroused herself, glad perhaps of the interruption to her thoughts.
"Is it you, Fanny? Where are they all, dear?"
"Mamma's at work in the nursery. She's running the seams, and showing Miss Cooper how she wants the bodies cut. Anna's there too. Have you seen Uncle Robert?"
"Uncle Robert is not back yet, Fanny."
"Yes, he is," replied the young lady, who at all times was fond of her own opinion.
"You are mistaken," said Clara. "He would have come in to me the first thing."
"But I saw him. I saw him in the garden ever so long ago. Lady Ellis was with him. They were at the back there, walking towards the shrubbery."
Indisputable testimony; and Clara Lake could have bitten her tongue for saying "He would have come to me the first thing," although her audience consisted only of a child. Mr. Lake was to have brought her some book from home that he had forgotten the previous time; she was ardently longing for it, and thought he would at least have come straight to her and delivered it.