“I think it would be better,” I replied. “Winchester is really only a short way from home, and he is sure to want to pick up things there. I do hope father won’t think it too far for him to come for so short a time.”
“It need not be so short a time, as far as we are concerned,” said Mr Wynyard hospitably. “But of course the boy will have to get back to school again whenever he can. I’ll tell you what,” he went on, “I will write to your father myself, which I think will ensure Moore’s being allowed to come.”
“Oh, thank you,” I said gratefully, and indeed I felt so.
“Your father is very kind,” I said to Isabel when we were by ourselves. “I am getting to feel much less afraid of him.”
Isabel looked pleased at this.
“I told you so,” she said. “I can’t imagine being afraid of him unless I knew I was doing something wrong.”
Her words recalled our discussion about the Grim House.
“I know,” I thought to myself, “who would sympathise with me about it to the full, and that’s Moore. I wonder if I dare tell him.”
Then another warning returned to my mind—that of Jocelyn.
“How curious that he should have thought of such a possibility as Moore’s coming here,” I said to myself. “I feel half inclined to look at things from the ‘Kismet’ point of view. ‘What is to be, will be.’ If Moore’s coming here helps me to go on with my investigations without involving Isabel, which I now see I have no right to do, it will seem as if it was all meant. That’s to say, if I make up my mind to tell him about it, in spite of Jocelyn’s fatherly advice.”