Ivor Restormel walked over in the afternoon. Gundred gave him tea and then left him to her husband’s care, on the plea of a post to catch. Kingston took his guest into the new wing that had been built on the promontory after the fire, and proceeded to question him and talk to him more exhaustively than had been possible the night before amid the exigencies of a party, no matter how scandalously disregarded. There was no beginning about their friendship, it seemed to Kingston, no breaking of new ground. It was simply the picking up of a dropped thread where it had fallen. The feeling was strange and almost uncanny, the more so that it was evidently not shared by Ivor Restormel. He received his host’s overtures with diffidence, seemed ill at ease, at a loss to understand the warmth of his treatment. Mr. Darnley was nothing more to him than a chance acquaintance of the night before. As the dialogue went forward, too, the visitor’s uneasiness became more and more marked. His face took on a strange look of strain and anxiety; in his speech could be heard from time to time that note of abstraction which can be heard in a voice whose owner is trying hard to keep up a conversation, while his mind is fixed far away on the contemplation of unpleasant private matters. Kingston watched the expression of his guest’s eyes, the curious hunted fear that his whole manner began to suggest, and again experienced more strongly than ever the mysterious feeling of having seen that manner, that strained expression, somewhere before. His memory must be playing him the maddest tricks; for he could have sworn that this boy was well known to him in every detail of face and disposition; yet by now it was clearly proved—as clearly proved, at least, as anything in this world could ever be—that the two had never met, and never even set eyes on each other before. But Kingston still hoped against hope that a chance discovery in the dialogue might reveal some hint or glimpse of a former meeting, however brief, partial, trifling. Thus, and thus alone, could his instinct be justified.
But, as the conversation went forward, the visitor’s uneasiness grew keener and more unsettling. At last it could no longer be controlled.
‘I should awfully like to see some more of the Castle,’ he said. ‘You said something last night about showing me the pictures.’
But the boy’s evident wish to move was too interesting to be gratified. Kingston saw it, could not understand it, meant to understand it.
‘Oh, there will be heaps of time,’ he replied. ‘You must come over again some afternoon. But it takes at least a day to see the Castle thoroughly. We may just as well stay here peacefully. Really, these are the most comfortable rooms in the whole building, although they are quite modern.’
‘Modern, are they?’ answered young Restormel. It was a silly answer, and betrayed the inattention of his mind. For the rooms were too obviously modern for any comment on the fact to be other than fatuous.
‘Yes, they were only built about—yes, twenty years ago.’
Ivor Restormel leapt to his feet. His anxiety culminated, seemed mysteriously confirmed. His eyes were filled with a horror he was trying to conceal. ‘Surely,’ he stammered, ‘these are not the rooms that were restored after the——’
‘After the fire? Yes. This was where the old wing stood.’
‘I thought so; I knew they must be,’ replied Ivor Restormel with forced calm. ‘And they have not got rid of the smell yet. I noticed it as soon as I got inside.’