"I will do so," he said, "if I hear anything about him. It scarcely seems likely."

Wilhelmina sat quite still. Her head, resting slightly upon the long delicate fingers of her right hand, was turned away from the young man who was daring to watch her. She was apparently gazing across the park, down the magnificent avenue of elms which led to the village. So he was gone--without a word! How else? On the whole she could not but approve!

And yet!--and yet!

She turned once more to Hurd.

"I read the account of the inquest on your father's death," she said, speaking very slowly, with her usual drawl, yet with a softer note in her voice, as though out of respect for the dead man. "Does it not seem very strange that the money was left untouched?"

"Yes!" he answered. "Yet, after all, I don't know. You see, the governor must have closed with the fellow and shown fight before he got that knock on the head. If the thief was really only an ordinary tramp, he'd be scared to death at what he'd done, and probably bolt for his life without stopping to take anything with him."

"Isn't it rather surprising to have tramps--in Thorpe?" she asked.

"I have scarcely ever seen one," he answered.

Wilhelmina turned her head slightly, so that she was now directly facing him. She looked him steadily in the eyes.

"Has it occurred to you, Mr. Hurd," she asked, "that this young man may not have been a tramp at all, and that his visit to your father may have been on other business than that of robbery?"

He hesitated for a moment.

"My father's connexions with the outside world," he said slowly, "were so slight."

"Yet it has occurred to you?"

"Yes!" he admitted.

"And have you come to any conclusion?"

"None," he declared.

"You carried out my instructions with regard to the papers and doc.u.ments belonging to the estate?"

"Certainly, madam," he answered. "Within five minutes of receiving your message, they were all locked up in the safe and the key handed to your messenger."

"You did not go through them yourself?" she asked.

"I did not," he answered, lying with admirable steadiness. "I scarcely felt that I was ent.i.tled to do so."

"So that you could not tell if any were missing?" she continued.

"I could not," he admitted.

"Your father never spoke, then, of any connexions with people--outside Thorpe--likely to prove of a dangerous character?"

The young man smiled. "My father," he said, "had not been farther than Loughborough for twenty years."

There was a short silence. Wilhelmina, deliberately, and without any attempt at concealment, was meditatively watching the young man, studying his features with a half-contemptuous and yet searching interest. Perhaps the slightly curving lips, the hard intentness of her gaze, suggested that he was disbelieved. He lost colour and fidgeted about. It was a scrutiny not easy to bear, and he felt that it was going against him. Already she had written him down a liar.

She spoke to him at last. If the silence had not ended soon, he would have made some blundering attempt to retrieve his position. She spoke just in time to avert such ignominy.

"Mr. Hurd," she said, "the question of your father's successor is one that has doubtless occurred to you as it has to me. I trust that you will, at any rate, remain here. As to whether I can offer you your father's position in its entirety, I am not for the present a.s.sured."

He glanced up at her furtively. He was certain now that he had played his cards ill. She had read through him easily. He cursed himself for a lout.

"You see," she continued, "the post is one of great responsibility, because it entails the management of the whole estates. It is necessary for me to feel absolute confidence in the person who undertakes it. I have not known you very long, Mr. Hurd."

He bowed. He could not trust himself to words.

"I have instructed them to send some one down from my solicitor's office for a week or so," she continued, "to a.s.sist you. In the meantime, I must think the matter over."

"I am very much obliged to you, madam," he said. "You will find me, I think, quite as trustworthy and devoted to your interests as my father."

She smiled slightly. She recognized exactly his quandary, and it amused her. The slightest suggestion of menace in his manner would be to give the lie to himself.

"I am coming down this afternoon," she said, "to go through the safes.

Please be there in case I want you. You will not forget, in case you should hear anything of Mr. Macheson, that I desire to be informed."

He took his leave humiliated and angry. He had started the game with a wrong move--retrievable, perhaps, but annoying. Wilhelmina pa.s.sed into the library, where Lady Peggy, in a wonderful morning robe, was leaning back in an easy-chair dictating letters to Captain Austin.

"You dear woman!" she exclaimed, "don't interrupt us, will you? I have found an ideal secretary, writes everything I tell him, and spells quite decently considering his profession. My conscience is getting lighter every moment."

"And my heart heavier," Austin grumbled. "A most flirtatious correspondence yours."

She laughed softly.

"My next shall be to my dressmaker," she declared. "Such a charming woman, and so trustful. Behave yourself nicely, and you shall go with me to call on her next week, and see her mannikins. By the bye, Wilhelmina, am I hostess or are you?"

"You, by all means," Wilhelmina answered. "I shall go to-morrow or the next day. Is any one coming to lunch?"

"His Grace, I fancy--no one else."

Wilhelmina yawned.

"Where is Gilbert?" she asked.

"Asleep on the lawn last time I saw him."

"No one shooting, then?"

"We're going to beat up the home turnips after lunch," Captain Austin answered. "It's rather an off day with us. Gilbert is nursing his leg--fancies he has rheumatism coming."

She strolled out into the garden, but she avoided the spot where Gilbert Deyes lounged in an easy-chair, reading the paper and smoking cigarettes, with his leg carefully arranged on a garden chair in front of him. She took the winding path which skirted the kitchen gardens and led to the green lane, along which the carts pa.s.sed to the home farm.

She felt that what she was doing was in the nature of an experiment, she was yielding again to that most astonishing impulse which once before had taken her so completely by surprise. She pa.s.sed out of the gate and along the lane. She began to climb the hill. About the success of her experiment she no longer had any doubt. Her heart was beating with pleasant insistence, a feeling of suppressed excitement sent the blood gliding through her veins with delicious softness. All the time she mocked at herself--that this should be Wilhelmina Thorpe-Hatton, to whom the most distinguished men, not only in one capital, but in Europe, had paid court, whom the most ardent wooer had failed to move, who had found, indeed, in all the professions of love-making something insufferably tedious. She was at once amused and annoyed at herself, but an instinctive habit of truthfulness forbade even self-deception. Her cheeks were aflame, and her heart was beating like a girl's as she reached the spinney. She recognized the fact that she was experiencing a new and delightful pleasure, an emotion as unexpected and ridiculous as it was inexplicable. But she hugged it to herself. It pleased her immensely to feel that the impossible had happened. What all this army of men, experienced in the wiles of love-making, had failed to do, a crazy boy had accomplished without an effort. Absolutely bizarre, of course, but not so wonderful after all! She was so secure against any ordinary a.s.sault. She felt herself like the heroine of one of Gautier's novels. If he had been there himself, she would have taken him into her arms with all the pa.s.sionate simplicity of a child.

But he was not there. On the contrary, the place was looking forlorn and deserted. The shelter had been razed to the ground--she felt that she hated Stephen Hurd as she contemplated its ruin--the hedge was broken down by the inrush of people a few days ago. In the absence of any sunshine, the country around seemed bleak and colourless. She leaned over the gate and half closed her eyes. Memory came more easily like that!