“A tangle, dear lady? What may be its nature?”
“It is a note which the earl holds against the lessee of his coal mine in Bentland. There have been three payments made on it: but there was a considerable sum of interest due on the amount paid, which interest was not paid. So, you see, there has been interest on interest, and—Oh! it is a mixed up mess in every way. Come; we shall have time to fix it before dark, if we go at it directly. Oh! I am so glad you are here!”
“If the mistress commands, I suppose the slave must obey,” said Percy, a pleasant smile rippling over his handsome face, as he made a movement as though to follow her.
Ordinarily the sparkling, quick-witted girl would have made a joking, laughing rejoinder to his sally, but it was not so now.
“Oh! Percy,” she returned, the look she gave him full of grateful emotion. “I do not feel like a mistress in this dire strait. I must acknowledge you the master. But,” she added, as they started on their way, “I will be mistress to-morrow, when I shall expect you to obey me very punctually.”
“You have but to command me, lady.”
“We shall see.”
Cordelia led the way to a prettily furnished boudoir on the second floor of the modern wing, where were found the books and papers she had been overhauling for her grandfather. So she always called him, and she could not feel that he had been anything else to her.
The note was produced, with half a dozen scrawling, blotted indorsements on its back, three of which were not dated.
“Paid on the within—£500,” one of them read with no date.