"Oh, yes, sir, Dr. Rapp was sent for the very day after Sir Everard arrived, and every morning he jogs over from Oakbarrow on his brown mare, passing here again on his way back about three-quarters of an hour later."
"But even if poor Sir Everard is too ill to leave the house, that seems no reason why his wife should not be seen out of doors now and then."
"She is seen out of doors now and then, sir; I never said she wasn't. The family brought neither horses nor carriages with them, but her ladyship has hired a barouche and pair from the King's Arms' at Oakbarrow, in which she and Miss Roylance take the air on most fine afternoons."
Mr. Brabazon pricked up his ears. "Miss---- I didn't quite catch the young lady's name."
"Miss Roylance, sir, who is said to be her ladyship's ward, or niece, or something of that kind. She arrived at the Keep a couple of days after the family, and has been staying there ever since."
Burgo had never heard Miss Roylance's name before which was scarcely to be wondered at.
"Almost on the heels of Miss Roylance another visitor, a gentleman this time, made his appearance at the Keep," resumed the landlord, "so like her ladyship both in features and expression, only that he must be several years the elder of the two, that one hardly needed to be told he was her brother. His name, sir, did you say? It's a foreign one; they say her ladyship is a foreigner born, though she speaks English as well as you or I. He calls himself Siggnor--Siggnor--hang me if I can remember the name! nor, if I did, am I rightly sure how to pronounce it. Anyhow, he's a fine-looking man, nobody can deny that, but with something in his face that made me say to myself the first time I clapped eyes on him: 'If you owed me a grudge, you're not the sort I should care to meet face to face in a lonely road, and you with a dagger hidden about you.' But of course that was merely a foolish fancy on my part; for no doubt the gentleman's as harmless as my pet canary. He seems fond of taking long walks on the cliffs, or across the moors, his only companions at such times being two big, fierce dogs of some foreign breed, which, carefully muzzled, follow him about wherever he goes. At night, however--so I've been told--they are unmuzzled and turned loose in the courtyard."
After this the men smoked awhile in silence.
It seemed clear to Burgo that he had picked up a lot of information which, even if it should ultimately prove of little real value, had at all events served to put him au courant with affairs at the Keep so far as outsiders had any cognisance of them.
"You said just now," he presently remarked aloud, "that Sir Everard Clinton had caused the Keep to be put in thorough repair, but I suppose all that was arranged for some considerable time before his marriage?"