She had both seen him and heard from him, on reaching home. "He opened that door," she told me, "and threw on the floor one of the leaves out of his book. After doing that, he relieved me from the sight of him."
"Show me the leaf, Cristel."
"Father has got it. I thought he was asleep in the armchair. He snatched it out of my hand. It isn't worth reading."
She turned pale, nevertheless, when she replied in those terms. I could see that I was disturbing her, when I asked if she remembered what the Cur had written. But our position was far too serious to be trifled with. "I suppose he threatened you?" I said, trying to lead her on. "What did he say?"
"He said, if any attempt was made to remove me out of his reach, after what had happened that evening, my father would find him on the watch day and night, and would regret it to the end of his life. The wretch thinks me cruel enough to have told my father of the horrors we went through! You know that he has dismissed his poor old servant? Was I wrong in advising Gloody to go to you?"
"You were quite right. He is at my house—and I should like to keep him at Trimley Deen; but I am afraid he and the other servants might not get on well together?"
"Will you let him come here?"
She spoke earnestly; reminding me that I had thought it wrong to leave her father, at his age, without someone to help him.
"If an accident separated me from him," she went on, "he would be left alone in this wretched place."
"What accident are you thinking of?" I asked. "Is there something going on, Cristel, that I don't know of?"