“Trust you old soldiers for knowing the value of time. And now that we have settled everything so far, you must oblige me by staying to luncheon,” said Sir Gilbert with a heartiness that was more assumed than real. Do what he would, he could not like this man. And yet he had nothing valid, nothing tangible to urge against him. “I am a prejudiced old fool,” he said to himself, “and the older I get the worse I become.”
At luncheon the Captain was fortunate enough to give Lady Pell a distinctly favourable impression of himself, which went to prove that Lady Pell’s professed ability to read character at first sight was sometimes at fault. “I agree with you that the man is not quite a gentleman,” she remarked later to Sir Gilbert; “but in that respect he only resembles the great majority of his sex. In these matters, my dear cousin, one can’t pick and choose. It seems to me that Captain Verinder, as the boy’s uncle, is the proper person to entrust him to.”
Next morning after breakfast, Luigi said to Lady Pell when no one was by: “Can you spare me five minutes in private, Lady Pell?”
“Certainly, my dear boy,” was the cordial response. “Come with me to my sitting-room.” There was much about Luigi that she did not like, but it seemed to her that in some respects he was deserving of pity.
“And now——?” she said, looking questioningly at him as she took her usual chair by the window and motioned him to another. The room, which had been specially assigned her, had been the late Lady Clare’s boudoir.
Luigi cleared his voice and then, a whimsical smile overspreading his features, said: “Lady Pell, last night I saw the Grey Brother.”
Lady Pell pricked up her ears and became at once interested. “Gracious me!” she exclaimed. “You do indeed surprise me. When and where did it happen? You must give me all particulars.”
“It was late—between eleven and twelve o’clock—I had stolen out of the house by way of the conservatory on purpose to have a smoke.” Here Lady Pell shook a monitory finger at him. “The fact is, I’ve never been used to the early hours of the Chase, and I can’t sleep if I go to bed before midnight. Well, having let myself out, I made my way to the little wood, or spinny, which reaches from the back premises of the Chase nearly as far as the old tower where Martin Rigg, the former keeper, and his daughter have their quarters. It was not the first time I had gone there for a smoke after dark. In the middle of it is a tiny glade, or open space, and there I seated myself on the twisted root of a tree. A young moon was half way up the sky, and the stars were very bright. I had smoked one pipe out and thought I would have another before turning in, but on feeling for my tobacco-pouch, which I had laid down beside me, I could not find it. Slipping off my seat, I stooped to search for it among the grass, found it and stood up again. On turning to resume my seat I found myself confronted by a tall robed and cowled figure, which might have sprung out of the ground for anything I could have told to the contrary. Certainly I had heard no faintest sound of footsteps. That I was considerably flabbergasted, your ladyship will readily believe.”
“Such an apparition would be enough to flabbergast anybody, as you term it. But what was it like as regards its features?”
“Its face was nearly hidden by its cowl, and all I can call to mind is that it had a long grizzled beard and two eyes that seemed to look through me.”