‘Yes, yes; I beg pardon of course,’ exclaimed the baronet reddening, but still fixing his eyes searchingly on the placid face of his ward.
The Indian orphan bore his scrutiny with an admirable composure. Her lower lip trembled a little, as was natural, when she turned towards Lucy. ‘Pray do tell me,’ she said, ‘what has happened? for it really does seem as though I had been unfortunate enough to make Sir Sykes angry with me.’
‘Papa has lost a letter—a letter of importance,’ said Lucy, blushing as she spoke; ‘and as the servants deny all knowledge of it, and its loss’——
‘Say theft, not loss!’ interrupted the baronet with unwonted harshness. ‘I make no doubt that the letter was stolen from my desk in the library, on which I had left it for but some two minutes, while I went to speak with my son in the White Room. The French window nearest to the fireplace was open, giving an easy means of entry, as of egress, for the purloiner of this letter, who must have been on the watch for an opportunity of surprising my secrets—that is to say,’ stammered Sir Sykes, who felt the imprudence of these last words—‘of basely prying into my private correspondence.’
‘Are you quite, quite sure, papa dear,’ pleaded Blanche, ‘that you left the letter there, instead of bestowing it in some safe place for safe keeping, which may afterwards have escaped your memory, and will presently be recollected? Such things have happened often and often, even to the most methodical, and’——
‘There, there, my girl!’ broke in the baronet peevishly. ‘Have I not heard that argument repeated ad nauseam by every man and maid that I have questioned; and is it not the stock answer to all inquiries after missing trinkets or valuables unaccounted for? I grant that I can prove nothing. If I could’——
He did not complete the sentence, but crushing down the wrath that almost choked his voice, turned away. Nothing, at this unpleasant conjuncture, could be in better taste, or more simple, than Ruth’s demeanour. She began to cry. It was the first time since the day of her arrival that any one at Carbery had seen her in tears, and now both Blanche and Lucy came kindly to kiss her and console her with whispered entreaties to excuse Sir Sykes for an indiscriminate anger which there was much to palliate. But Ruth soon dried her eyes, and going up to her guardian laid her hand upon his arm and looked up timidly in his face.
‘Let me be useful,’ she said. ‘Let me help in hunting high and low for this letter; pray, pray do, dear Sir Sykes, you who have been so very, very kind to me since I have been here.’
Nothing could be prettier. And Sir Sykes, though in his present irritable condition he actually shuddered at her light touch upon his arm, as though he had been in contact with a snake, was compelled to say a word or two of apology.
‘I am greatly annoyed,’ he said awkwardly, ‘and have been unjust and inhospitable, I fear, and must ask you to forget my rudeness. I am best alone.’