"Roy is gone, is he not?" he continued to Rachel.
"Yes, sir."
"Rachel," interposed the housekeeper, "are those things not ready yet, in the laundry?"
"Not quite. In a quarter of an hour, they say."
The housekeeper, with a word of impatience at the laundry's delay, went out and crossed the yard towards it. Frederick Massingbird turned again to Rachel.
"Roy seemed to be grumbling at you."
"He accused me of being the cause of his son's going away. He thinks I ought to have noticed him."
Frederick Massingbird made no reply. He raised his finger and gently rubbed it round and round the mark upon his cheek: a habit he had acquired when a child, and they could not entirely break him of it. He was seven-and-twenty years of age now, but he was sure to begin rubbing that mark unconsciously, if in deep thought. Rachel resumed, her tone a covert one, as if the subject on which she was about to speak might not be breathed, even to the walls.
"Roy hinted that his son was going to foreign lands. I did not choose to let him see that I knew anything, so remarked that I had heard he was gone to London. 'London!' he answered; 'that was only the first halting-place on the journey!'"
"Did he give any hint about John?"