"There, for goodness' sake, cut some bread on the sideboard," said the angry master, "and hand it round instead of staring about you like a stuck pig. What they taught you at Sir William Jute's I can't conceive. I didn't undertake to make a man-servant of you, sir."
The pale, harassed lad flew at the bread, cut it with a vast scattering of crumbs, handed it clumsily round, and then took glad advantage of a short supply of coffee to bolt from the room to order more.
"Idiot!" said Mr. Boyce, with an angry frown, as he disappeared.
"If you would allow Ann to do her proper parlour work again," said his wife blandly, "you would, I think, be less annoyed. And as I believe William was boot boy at the Jutes', it is not surprising that he did not learn waiting."
"I tell you, Evelyn, that our position demands a man-servant!" was the hot reply. "None of my family have ever attempted to run this house with women only. It would be unseemly—unfitting—incon—"
"Oh, I am no judge of course of what a Boyce may do!" said his wife carelessly. "I leave that to you and the neighbourhood."
Mr. Boyce looked uncomfortable, cooled down, and presently when the coffee came back asked his wife for a fresh supply in tones from which all bellicosity had for the time departed. He was a small and singularly thin man, with blue wandering eyes under the blackest possible eyebrows and hair. The cheeks were hollow, the complexion as yellow as that of the typical Anglo-Indian. The special character of the mouth was hidden by a fine black moustache, but his prevailing expression varied between irritability and a kind of plaintiveness. The conspicuous blue eyes were as a rule melancholy; but they could be childishly bright and self-assertive. There was a general air of breeding about Richard Boyce, of that air at any rate which our common generalisations connect with the pride of old family; his dress was careful and correct to the last detail; and his hands with their long fingers were of an excessive delicacy, though marred as to beauty by a thinness which nearly amounted to emaciation.
"The servants say they must leave unless the ghost does, Marcella," said Mrs. Boyce, suddenly, laying a morsel of toast as she spoke on Lynn's nose. "Someone from the village of course has been talking—the cook says she heard something last night, though she will not condescend to particulars—and in general it seems to me that you and I may be left before long to do the house work."
"What do they say in the village?" asked Marcella eagerly.
"Oh! they say there was a Boyce two hundred years ago who fled down here from London after doing something he shouldn't—I really forget what. The sheriff's officers were advancing on the house. Their approach displeased him, and he put an end to himself at the head of the little staircase leading from the tapestry-room down to my sitting-room. Why did he choose the staircase?" said Mrs. Boyce with light reflectiveness.