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"Where am I?" He turned his bandaged head stiffly toward the nurse beside him. "In Threlfall Tower the house of Mr. Edmund Melrose," she said, bending over him. The nurse saw him smile. "That's queer. What happened?" His companion gave him a short account of the accident and of Undershaw's handling of it.
"There had been a quarrel?" He gave her in outline the contents of Undershaw's letter. "He still inherits?" Her eyes, shone as he came to the climax of the story Faversham's refusal of the gems Melrose's threat. The trembling of her delicate mouth urged him for more and yet more light. "Everything land, money, collections under the will made in August.
Then he rang, and when Hurst appeared, all white and disorganized under the stress of the news just communicated to him by Undershaw's chauffeur, he ordered his horse for eight o'clock in the morning. Victoria looked at him puzzled; then it seemed she understood. But every other thought was soon swallowed up in the remembrance of the widow and daughter.
When Undershaw left him, Tatham rode on, up the forest lane, till again the trees fell away, the wide valley with its boundary fells opened before him, and again his eye sought through the windy dusk for the far-gleaming light that spoke to him of Lydia. His mind was full of fresh agitation, stirred by Undershaw's remark about her.
"Of course, if you persist in asking him to stay, I suppose he must ultimately decide." Undershaw's tone betrayed his annoyance. "But I warn you, I reserve my own right of advice. And moreover supposing you do furnish this room for him, allow me to point out that he will soon want something else, and something more, even, than a better room. He will want cheerful society." "Well?"
That man Undershaw says you must have some society invite some people." Faversham laughed. "I don't know a soul, either at Keswick or Pengarth." "There have been some people inquiring after you." "Oh, young Tatham? Yes, I knew him at Oxford." "And the women who are they?" Faversham explained. "Miss Penfold seems to have recognized me from Undershaw's account.
But as the fear of blood-poisoning had been in Undershaw's mind from the beginning, they led him to postpone, in any case, the arrangements that had been set on foot for Faversham's departure. During three or four days afterward he saw little or nothing of Melrose. But he and Nurse Aston were well aware that unusual things were going on in the house.
He made no reply to Undershaw's admiring comments; and the doctor wondered whether he was already ashamed of the impulse which had made him do so strange a thing. Presently, he threw open the door he had unlocked the week before, Undershaw stepped into a room no less attractive than the gallery outside.
Melrose seemed to have opened the drawer in a fit of abstraction during which he had forgotten Undershaw's presence. But, if so, the act roused him, and he looked round half angrily, half furtively at his visitor, as he hastily relocked the drawer. Then speaking with renewed arrogance, he said: "Well, sir, I will see to these things.
I dare say Undershaw's told you he's thick with them. The young man has been insolent to me on one or two occasions. I shall have to take him down. He's one of your popularity-hunting fools. However you ask him by all means if you want him. He'll come to see you. Ask him Thursday. I shall be at Carlisle for the day. Tell him so."
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