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"When?" "Hours ago, sir when you went into Toller's cottage." I troubled my fat friend with no more questions. Returning to the house, and making polite apologies, I discovered one more among Mrs. Roylake's many accomplishments. It made its appearance when I led her to the luncheon table. "Don't let me detain you," my stepmother began. "Won't you give me some luncheon?" I inquired.
Roylake's ready observation. I told her that I had been annoyed, and offered no other explanation. Wonderful to relate, she showed no curiosity and no surprise. More wonderful still, at every fair opportunity that offered, she kept out of my way. My next day's engagement being for seven o'clock in the evening, I put Mrs. Roylake's self-control to a new test.
I wish you good morning." Between Lady Rachel's hard insolence, and Mrs. Roylake's sentimental hypocrisy, I was in such a state of irritation that I left Trimley Deen the next morning, to find forgetfulness, as I rashly supposed, in the gay world of London.
"For some part of the time," I answered, "I was catching moths in Fordwitch Wood." "What an extraordinary occupation for a young man! Well? And what did you do after that?" "I walked on through the wood, and renewed my old associations with the river and the mill." Mrs. Roylake's fascinating smile disappeared when I mentioned the mill. She suddenly became a cold lady I might even say a stiff lady.
I was dying for another cigar, and I entirely misunderstood the words of warning which had just been addressed to me. I tried to bring our interview to a close by making a generous proposal. "Does he want money?" I asked. "I'll lend him some with the greatest pleasure." Mrs. Roylake's horror expressed itself in a little thin wiry scream. "Oh, Gerard, what people you must have lived among!
After the performance of each trick, he asked leave to time himself by looking at his watch; being anxious to discover if he had lost his customary quickness of execution through recent neglect of the necessary practice. Of Cristel's conduct, while he was amusing us, I can only say that it justified Mrs. Roylake's spiteful description of her as a bold girl.
Furnished with these stores of information, I went my way, and the kitchen-maid went hers. She spoke, of course, of having seen her new master, on returning to the servants' hall. In this manner, as I afterwards heard, the discovery of me at the spring, and my departure by the path that led to the mill, reached Mrs. Roylake's ears the medium of information being the lady's own maid.
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