The Mating of Lydia

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

"I had almost forgotten them!"

"Your mother did not tell me much. They were troubled about Mrs. Melrose, I think, and Undershaw was coming. The poor little girl turned very white—no tears—but she was clinging to your mother."

Tatham's face softened, but he said nothing. The road to Threlfall presented itself, and he turned his horse toward it.

"And Miss Penfold?" said Boden, quietly. "You arrived before the newspapers? Good. I think, before I return, I shall go and have a talk with Miss Penfold."

And mounting his bicycle he rode off. Tatham looking after him, felt uncomfortably certain that Boden knew pretty well all there was to know about Lydia—Faversham—and himself. But he did not resent it.

Tatham found Threlfall a beleaguered place, police at the gates and in the house; the chief constable and the Superintendent of police established in the dining-room, as the only room tolerably free from the all encumbering collections, and interviewing one person after another.

Tatham asked to see the chief constable. He made his way into the gallery, which was guarded by police, for although the body of Melrose had been removed to an upper room, the blood-stain on the Persian carpet, the overturned chair and picture, the mud-marks on the wall remained untouched, awaiting the coroner's jury, which was to meet in the house that evening.

As Tatham approached the room which was now the headquarters of the police, he met coming out of it a couple of men; one small and sinewy, with the air of a disreputable athlete, the other a tall pasty-faced man in a shabby frock coat, with furtive eyes. The first was Nash, Melrose's legal factotum through many years; the other was one of the clerks in the Pengarth office, who was popularly supposed to have made much money out of the Threlfall estate, through a long series of small peculations never discovered by his miserly master. They passed Tatham with downcast eyes and an air of suppressed excitement which did not escape him. He found the chief constable pacing up and down, talking in subdued tones, and with a furrowed brow, to the Superintendent of police.

"Come in, come in," said Marvell heartily, at sight of the young man, who was the chief landowner of the district, and likely within a couple of years to be its lord lieutenant. "We want your help. Everything points to young Brand, and there is much reason to think he is still in the neighbourhood. What assistance can you give us?"

Tatham promised a band of searchers from the estate. The Duddon estate itself included a great deal of mountain ground, some of the loneliest and remotest in the district, where a man who knew the fells might very well take hiding. Marvell brought out a map, and they pored over it.