"No, papa, I have not seen Cyril at all."
Justice Thornycroft strode downstairs again. Sinnett, who did not like to be rebuked--and, in truth, rarely gave occasion for it--looked rather sullen as she put down the cup and saucer.
"Nobody has been in the side garden since I got up," cried Sinnett.
"Oh, it was before that," too hastily affirmed Miss Thornycroft. "They were strange voices," she hurriedly added, as if afraid of more questions.
Sinnett shut the door on Miss Thornycroft, and went away ruminating. Something like fear had arisen to the woman's own face.
"What does it all mean?" she asked herself, unconsciously resting the small silver waiter on the window-seat, as she stood looking out. "She could not have heard anything outside in the herb-garden, for nobody has had the key of it this morning; and as to people having been up here talking of it before I was up, the poor man had not then been found."
That some dreadful mystery existed, something that would not bear the light of day, and in which Miss Thornycroft was in some way mixed up, Sinnett felt certain. And, woman-like, she spoke out her thoughts too freely: not in ill-nature; not to do harm to Miss Thornycroft or anyone else; but in the love of talking, in the wish to get her own curiosity satisfied. How had she learnt the news? Sinnett wondered again and again. What was it that had put her into this unnatural state of alarm and fear? Regret she might feel for Robert Hunter; horror at his dreadful fate--but whence arose the fear? Shrewd Sinnett finally descended, her brain in full work.
When the party in the breakfast-room had concluded their meal, which they did not spare, in spite of the sight their eyes had that morning looked on, they departed in a body, each one privately hoping he should be the first to alight on Mr. Cyril. In the present stage of the affair, Cyril Thornycroft was regarded as the one only person who could throw light upon it. It did not clearly appear where he could be. Richard's suggestion of the Mermaid was an exceedingly improbable one. He was not there; he seemed not to be anywhere else; nobody appeared to have seen him since the previous night, when he was starting to walk a little way with Robert Hunter.
Mr. Thornycroft sat down in the justice room to write to the coroner, and was interrupted by his eldest son. He looked up in expectation.
"Has Cyril turned up, Richard?"