Here Miss Brown, who had been following, came out from the dusk of the room behind. “I beg your pardon, ma’am. I did not like to tell you in your trouble; but I’m very uneasy about Miss Lily.”
“Has she never come in yet? You said she had gone out for a walk.”
“I said whatever I could think of to save you, Miss Mary. We none of us know where she’s gone. I’ve sent everywhere. She is not at the Vicarage, nor she’s not at the village; and—oh, what will Mr. John think of us?” cried the woman in tears. “Not one in the house has seen her since yesterday, and Martuccia, she’s breaking her heart. She says Miss Lily has gone after her brother; she says—— ”
“Is Martuccia here?”
“Yes, sir,” said Miss Brown, with a curtsey. She could not take her eyes off him, as she afterwards said. More serious, far more serious than when he was a young gentleman always about the house, but the same man—still the same man.
“Then send her to me at once. It is you, Martha, the same as ever,” he said, with a momentary smile in the midst of his anxiety. Just as Mr. John used to do—always a kind word for everybody and a smile. She made him another curtsey, crying and smiling together.
“And glad, glad, sir, to see you come home,” she said. There was this excuse for Miss Brown’s lingering, that Mary had rushed off at once to find Martuccia. John bowed his head gravely. He had grown very serious. The habit of smiling was no longer his grand characteristic. He went downstairs into the library, the nearest sitting-room in his way, the door of which was standing open. Eastwood was there lingering about, pretending to put things in order, but in reality waiting for news of the old Squire. Eastwood knew that he had not let this man in. He had not got admission in any legitimate way. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he began, not altogether respectfully, with the intention of demanding what he did there.
“What?” said the stranger, looking up with a little impatience.
Eastwood drew back with another “Beg your pardon, sir!” and his tone was changed. He did not know who it was, but he dared not say anything more. This was the strangest house in the world surely, full of suspicions, full of new people who did not come in at the front door.
When Martuccia came, her story, which, had been almost inarticulate in her broken English, flowed forth volubly enough to her master, whom she recognized with a shriek of delight. She gave him a clear enough account of what had happened. How an old woman had come, a peasant of the country, and told Miss Lily that her little brother was in trouble. This word she transferred to her narrative without attempting to translate it, so that Mary, standing by, who did not understand the rest, seemed to hear nothing but this word recurring again and again. “Trouble!” it was an ominous word. Nothing but trouble seemed to surround them. She stood and listened anxiously, though she did not understand.