Mary did not see why he should go to lunch—­nor, for that matter, why she should either, but curiosity about the chief mourners made her glad that she was going.  The chief mourners did not look, at first sight, attractive.  Mr. Radbolt was a short plump man, with a weaselly face and cunning eyes; his wife’s eyes, of a greeny color, stared stolidly out from her broad red face; she was taller than her mate, and her figure contrived to be at once stout and angular.  All through the service, Beaumaroy’s gaze was set on the pair as they sat or stood in front of him, wandering from the one to the other in an apparently fascinated study.

At the Cottage he entertained his party in the parlor with a generous hospitality, and treated the Radbolts with most courteous deference.  The man responded with the best manners that he had—­who can do more?  The woman was much less cordial; she was curt, and treated Beaumaroy rather as the servant than the friend of her dead cousin; there was a clear suggestion of suspicion in her bearing towards him.  After a broad stare of astonishment on her introduction to “Dr. Arkroyd,” she took very little notice of Mary; only to Mr. Naylor was she clumsily civil and even rather cringing; it was clear that in him she acknowledged the gentleman.  He sat by her, and she tried to insinuate herself into a private conversation with him, apart from the others, probing him as to his knowledge of the dead man and his mode of living.  Her questions hovered persistently round the point of Mr. Saffron’s expenditure.

“Mr. Saffron was not a friend of mine,” Naylor found it necessary to explain.  “I had few opportunities of observing his way of life, even if I had felt any wish to do so.”

“I suppose Beaumaroy knew all about his affairs,” she suggested.

“As to that, I think you must ask Mr. Beaumaroy himself.”

“From what the lawyers say, the old man seems to have been getting rid of his money, somehow or to somebody,” she grumbled, in a positive whisper.

To Mr. Naylor’s intense relief, Beaumaroy interrupted this conversation.  “Well, how do you like this little place, Mrs. Radbolt?” he asked cheerfully.  “Not a bad little crib, is it?  Don’t you think so too, Dr. Arkroyd?” Throughout this gathering Beaumaroy was very punctilious with his “Dr. Arkroyd.”  One would have thought that Mary and he were almost strangers.

“Yes, I like it,” said Mary.  “The Tower makes it rather unusual and picturesque.”  This was not really her sincere opinion; she was playing up to Beaumaroy, convinced that he had opened some conversational maneuver.

“Don’t like it at all,” answered Mrs. Radbolt.  “We’ll get rid of it as soon as we can, won’t we, Radbolt?” She always addressed her husband as “Radbolt.”