‘From what I hear, he has not the manner of a broken-hearted man?’
‘Not at all. Since that illness he has been happy, as you see him: no pride, quite calm and mild; at new moon quite childish. ‘Tis that makes him able to live there; before he was so ill he couldn’t bear a zight of the place, but since then he is happy nowhere else, and never leaves the parish further than to drive once a week to Markton. His head won’t stand society nowadays, and he lives quite lonely as you zee, only zeeing his daughter, or his son whenever he comes home, which is not often. They say that if his brain hadn’t softened a little he would ha’ died—‘twas that saved his life.’
‘What’s this I hear about his daughter? Is she really hired companion to the new owner?’
‘Now that’s a curious thing again, these two girls being so fond of one another; one of ‘em a dissenter, and all that, and t’other a De Stancy. O no, not hired exactly, but she mostly lives with Miss Power, and goes about with her, and I dare say Miss Power makes it wo’th her while. One can’t move a step without the other following; though judging by ordinary volks you’d think ‘twould be a cat-and-dog friendship rather.’
‘But ‘tis not?’
‘’Tis not; they be more like lovers than maid and maid. Miss Power is looked up to by little De Stancy as if she were a god-a’mighty, and Miss Power lets her love her to her heart’s content. But whether Miss Power loves back again I can’t zay, for she’s as deep as the North Star.’
The landlord here left the stranger to go to some other part of the house, and Somerset drew near to the glass partition to gain a glimpse of a man whose interest in the neighbourhood seemed to have arisen so simultaneously with his own. But the inner room was empty: the man had apparently departed by another door.
VI.
The telegraph had almost the attributes of a human being at Stancy Castle. When its bell rang people rushed to the old tapestried chamber allotted to it, and waited its pleasure with all the deference due to such a novel inhabitant of that ancestral pile. This happened on the following afternoon about four o’clock, while Somerset was sketching in the room adjoining that occupied by the instrument. Hearing its call, he looked in to learn if anybody were attending, and found Miss De Stancy bending over it.
She welcomed him without the least embarrassment. ‘Another message,’ she said.—‘"Paula to Charlotte.—Have returned to Markton. Am starting for home. Will be at the gate between four and five if possible.”’