CHAPTER XII. THE HAIR BRACELET.
Mr. Blyth’s spirits sank apace, as he bolted and locked the front door, when his guests had left him. He actually sighed as he now took a turn or two alone, up and down the studio.
Three times did he approach close to the garden door, as he walked slowly from end to end of the room. But he never once looked up at it. His thoughts were wandering after Zack, and Zack’s friend; and his attention was keeping them company. “Whoever this mysterious Mat may be,” mused Valentine, stopping at the fourth turn, and walking up to the fireplace; “I don’t believe there’s anything bad about him; and so I shall tell Mrs. Thorpe the next time I see her.”
He set himself to rake out the fire, leaving only a few red embers and tiny morsels of coal to flame up fitfully from time to time in the bottom of the grate. Having done this, he stood and warmed himself for a little while, and tried to whistle a favorite tune. The attempt was a total failure. He broke down at the third bar, and ended lamentably in another sigh.
“What can be the matter with me? I never felt so miserable about going away from home before.” Puzzling himself uselessly with such reflections as these, he went to the supper-table, and drank a glass of wine, picked a bit of a sandwich, and unnecessarily spoilt the appearance of two sponge cakes, by absently breaking a small piece off each of them. He was in no better humor for eating or drinking, than for whistling; so he wisely determined to light his candle forthwith, and go to bed.
After extinguishing the lights that had been burning on the supper-table, he cast a parting glance all round the room, and was then about to leave it, when the drawing of the old five-barred gate, which he had taken down for Mat to look at, and had placed on a painting-stand at the lower end of the studio, caught his eye. He advanced towards it directly—stopped half-way—hesitated—yawned—shivered a little—thought to himself that it was not worth while to trouble about hanging the drawing up over the garden door, that night—and so, yawning again, turned on his heel and left the studio.
Mr. Blyth’s two servants slept up-stairs. About ten minutes after their master had ascended to his bed-room, they left the kitchen for their dormitory on the garret floor. Patty, the housemaid, stopped as she passed the painting room, to look in, and see that the lights were out, and the fire safe for the night. Polly, the cook, went on with the bedroom candle; and, after having ascended the stairs as far as the first landing from the hall, discreetly bethought herself of the garden door, the general care and superintendence of which was properly attached to her department in the household.
“I say, did you lock the garden door?” said Polly to Patty through the banisters.
“Yes; I did it when I took up master’s tea,” said Patty to Polly, appearing lazily in the hall, after one sleepy look round the fast-darkening studio.
“Hadn’t you better see to it again, to make sure?” suggested the cautious cook.