"You are very good," said Miss Diana, somewhat stiffly. "Rupert will do well where he is, I have no doubt: and for myself, I do not anticipate any such illness for him. I wish you a pleasant journey, Mr. Daw."
"Thank you, madam. I leave him to your kindness. It seems to me only a duty I owe to his dead father to mention to you that he may need extra care and kindness; and none so fitting to bestow it upon him as you—the guardian appointed by his mother."
"By the way, I cannot learn anything about that document," resumed Miss Diana. "Mr. Chattaway says that it never came to hand."
"Madam, it must have come to hand. If the letter in which it was enclosed reached Trevlyn Hold, it is a pretty good proof that the document also reached it. Mr. Chattaway must be mistaken."
Miss Diana did not see how, unless he was wilfully, falsely denying the fact. "A thought struck me the other day, which I wish to mention to you," she said aloud, quitting the subject for a different one. "The graves of my brother and his wife—are they kept in order?"
"Quite so," he answered. "I see to that."
"Then you must allow me to repay to you any expense you may have been put to. I——"
"Not so," he interrupted. "There is no expense—or none to speak of. The ground was purchased for ever, à perpétuité, as we call it over there, and the shrubs planted on the site require little or no care in the keeping. Now and then I do a half-day's work there myself, for the love of my lost friends. Should you ever travel so far—and I should be happy to welcome you—you will find their last resting-place well attended to, Miss Trevlyn."
"I thank you much," she said in heartier tones, as she held out her hand. "And I regret now that circumstances have prevented my extending hospitality to you."
And so they parted amicably. And the great ogre Mr. Chattaway had feared would eat him up, had subsided into a very harmless man indeed. Miss Diana went on to the Hold, deciding that her respected brother-in-law was a booby for having been so easily frightened into terror.