do you mean?" asked Barton sharply.
"Well, if you don't know, of course I don't," was Mrs. Darrow's ambiguous reply; and as the occasion was unpropitious, Barton did not press for an explanation. Still, he guessed that her remark had something more behind it, and the look he gave her in consequence caused Mrs. Darrow to devote herself exclusively to the soup for the next few minutes. In that glance of disapproval she saw the final disappearance of the cheque.
"I hope you like Thorpe, Miss Crane," said the Major in his ponderous way.
"Very much indeed. I like the quiet and peace."
"Really! Have you then had so stormy a life?"
"Oh no," Miriam laughed, and her merriment extracted a glare from Mrs. Darrow. "But I have lived a great deal in London, and the country is so restful after the roar of the city. Of course you prefer town?"
"No indeed; I was cut out by nature I believe for a country squire. I'm fond of soldiering of course," added the Major quickly, "but when I retire it will be to a place like this. I am more of a country bumpkin than my uncle. He's always running up to town."
"Is he?" murmured Miriam, thinking of Mrs. Perks and the hotel in Craven Street. "Why is that?"
"Oh, I don't know; he hunts after books and that sort of thing. My uncle is quite a student, you know."
Miriam did not think from what she knew of Mr. Barton that book hunting took up a very considerable portion of his time when in London; but evidently the simple Major believed the fiction in all good faith. But his next remark startled her.
"His taste in books is so peculiar," resumed Dundas, "and rather morbid; he collects all books dealing with crime."
Miss Crane paled, and hastily sipped her wine.
"With crime?"
"Yes, memoirs of Vidocq – Stories of Robbery and Murder, The Newgate Chronicle, and Jonathan Wilde; his library is filled with gruesome volumes of that kind. Did you ever hear of Selwyn the wit, the friend of Horace Walpole, Miss Crane?"
"No," murmured Miriam, self-possessed but colourless to the lips.
"His great delight was to see men hanged. My uncle seems to have the same queer taste. If public executions were in vogue I believe he would attend every one."
"John," called out the Squire, "what are you saying to Miss Crane? You're making her nervous, surely; she has lost all her colour."
"No, no," cried Miriam; "I am quite well."
"What a brute I am," said Dundas aloud; "but the fact is I was talking of your penchant for crime."
"Oh yes," said Mrs. Darrow vivaciously; "it's really horrid of Uncle Barton to be so fond of these things."
"Crime!" chuckled the Squire; "and what do you call crime? I'm a student of human nature in the depths, if that's what you mean. I like to search out the springs of action – to learn what moves man, the machine."
"In short, you are a realist, uncle," said Gerald.
"Oh, I don't know. I find the lower orders vastly more amusing than the higher, if you call that realism. I like to explore the slums and the thieves' kitchens, and talk to the detectives; and I like to hear of crimes that are impenetrable." And here his eyes rested on Miriam. She drank more wine.
"But I thought no crime was impenetrable nowadays," said Hilda.
"Indeed, my dear Miss Marsh, a great number are. Those crimes which are reported in the newspapers, those murderers who are hanged, constitute the minority. The clever crimes, the really interesting criminals, are never discovered."
Mrs. Darrow here entered a protest. She would not sleep she said if Uncle Barton thus rode his gruesome hobby, which was really a skeleton horse, or something horrid. She did think such things should not be spoken about in the presence of ladies; Miss Crane was quite pale with horror, so she would leave the gentlemen to discuss their wine and crime together, and carry the ladies off to the drawing-room – a determination which she at once put into execution. When the door closed on them, Mr. Barton became moody and silent. He left Gerald and Dundas to pass the bottle and do the talking; and knowing his sombre humours they left him to himself.
Shortly there entered a plethoric butler, purple of hue, as though all the blood in him had turned to port wine. He bent over his master and whispered.
"Eh? What do you say?" said Barton, rousing himself from a brown study.
"A gentleman to see you, sir!" whispered the man in a husky voice.
"Who is it?"
"The gentleman who was here before, sir."
"Confound you – how can I recognise anyone from that description? What's his name?"
"I don't rightly know, sir. He told me to mention the name Jabez."
"Jabez!" Barton jumped up with the alacrity of a man half his age. "Gerald! John! go into the drawing-room and entertain the ladies. I shall be engaged for the next half-hour in the library." And he vanished with the plethoric butler.
"Hullo! What's up with Uncle B.?" said Gerald.
Dundas shrugged his shoulders.
"One of his mysterious interviews, I suppose. He is a mystery in himself is Uncle Barton."
CHAPTER V.
BEHIND THE SCENES
In the drawing-room, Mrs. Darrow, feeling it incumbent upon her to provide entertainment for those assembled, decided she could not do better than relate to them the history of her married life – how good and devoted she had been to a brutal husband, how she had been unable to buy a rag of clothing for quite six months at a time, and consequently had been obliged to go unfashionably clothed. How she could have married at least a dozen men who were dying for her. But how foolishly she had chosen the only one who never appreciated her, and much more to the same effect. Such a theme she held, more especially when adequately set forth and expatiated upon, must be all absorbing.
Hilda, it was true, had heard a vastly different version of her friend's connubial existence. She knew, in fact, that the late Mr. Darrow had been something more than glad to leave this sphere. But for the present that mattered not at all.
Mrs. Darrow told her tale, and told it very well, and although neither of her audience was in the least degree convinced by it, undoubtedly many people would have been. Right in the midst of a sentimental outburst, in which she was declaring how now she lived solely for the sake of her darling child, being otherwise quite prepared to join the late Mr. Darrow in Heaven, the two young men entered.
"Already!" – the good lady was in no wise disconcerted at having thus abruptly to strike another note. – "Ah! our company is more attractive then than your wine and cigars?"
"Can you doubt it?" said Gerald, making his way over towards Hilda.
Thus deserted, Mrs. Darrow captured the Major, who, too polite to evade her, forthwith buckled to, and did his best to fall in with her very obvious desire for conversation, if not for controversy. Miriam, without a cavalier was thus left to her own devices. She scanned a photograph album which was at her hand.
"Where is Uncle Barton?" asked Mrs. Darrow. "He should be here, if only to entertain dear Miss Crane."
"I don't wish to be entertained, thank you," said Miriam, noting the petty spite. "I think if you don't mind I'll take a walk in the fresh air, it is so close here," she said, and, without waiting for approval or otherwise from Mrs. Darrow, she stepped through the French window which opened on to the terrace.
"Well, I'm sure!" ejaculated the widow. "What coolness! Don't go, John, I have so much to say to you."
"But doesn't it seem rather unkind to leave Miss Crane alone?" said the Major, who was already somewhat under the spell of Miriam's beauty.
"Oh, she likes being alone," smiled Mrs. Darrow – "she has the most mysterious love for solitude. What she thinks about I don't know!"
"Who is she, Julia?"
"Ah! that's