The Hold was busy when they entered. Mrs. Chattaway and her sister had just returned from Barmester, and were greeted by Mr. Chattaway. They had expected him for so many days past, and been disappointed, that his appearance now brought surprise with it. He answered the questions evasively put to him by Mrs. Chattaway and Diana, as to where he had been. Business had kept him, was all they could obtain from him.
"I cannot think what you have done for clothes, James," said Mrs. Chattaway.
"I have done very well," he retorted. "Bought what I wanted."
But it was not upon the score of his wardrobe, or what had kept him so long, that Miss Diana Trevlyn required Chattaway. She had been waiting since the first morning of his absence, for information on a certain point, and now demanded it in a peremptory manner.
"Chattaway," she began, when the rest had dispersed, and she waited with him, "I have had a strange communication made to me. In that past time—carry your thoughts back to it, if you please—when there came to this house the news of Rupert Trevlyn's birth and his mother's death—do you remember it?"
"Yes, I do," said Mr. Chattaway. "What should hinder me?"
"The tidings were conveyed by letter. Two letters came, the second a day after the first."
"Well?" returned Chattaway, believing the theme, in some shape or other, was to haunt him for ever. "What of the letters?"
"In that last letter, which must have been a heavy one, there was a communication enclosed for me."
"I don't remember it," said Mr. Chattaway.