“Couldn’t we tell her in confidence about Sir Timothy?”

“I have allowed Sir Timothy to understand that neither you nor I will betray his secret.”

“I’m no hand at keeping a secret,” said the canon, unhappily.

“Nonsense, canon, nonsense,” said Dr. Blundell, laying a friendly hand on his shoulder.  “No man in your profession, or in mine, ought to be able to say that.  Pull yourself together, hope for the best, and play your part.”

CHAPTER III

John Crewys looked round the hall at Barracombe House with curious, interested eyes.

It was divided from the outer vestibule on the western side of the building by a massive partition of dark oak, and it retained the solid beams and panelled walls of Elizabethan days; but the oak had been barbarously painted, grained and varnished.  Only the staircase was so heavily and richly carved, that it had defied the ingenuity of the comb engraver.  It occupied the further end of the hall, opposite the entrance door, and was lighted dimly by a small heavily leaded, stained-glass window.  The floor was likewise black, polished with age and the labour of generations.  A deeply sunken nail-studded door led into a low-ceiled library, containing a finely carved frieze and cornice, and an oak mantelpiece, which John Crewys earnestly desired to examine more closely; the shield-of-arms above it bore the figures of 1603, but the hall itself was of an earlier date.

Parallel to it was the suite of lofty, modern, green-shuttered reception-rooms, which occupied the south front of the house, and into which an opening had been cut through the massive wall next the chimney.

The character of the hall was, however, completely destroyed by the decoration which had been bestowed upon it, and by the furniture and pictures which filled it.

John Crewys looked round with more indignation than admiration at the home of his ancestors.

In the great oriel window stood a round mahogany table, bearing a bouquet of wax flowers under a glass shade.  Cases of stuffed birds ornamented every available recess; mahogany and horsehair chairs were set stiffly round the walls at even distances.  A heap of folded moth-eaten rugs and wraps disfigured a side-table, and beneath it stood a row of clogs and goloshes.

Round the walls hung full-length portraits of an early Victorian date.  The artist had spent a couple of months at Barracombe fifty years since, and had painted three generations of the Crewys family, who were then gathered together beneath its hospitable roof.  His diligence had been more remarkable than his ability.  At any other time John Crewys would have laughed outright at this collection of works of art.

But the air was charged with tragedy, and he could not laugh.  His seriousness commended him favourably, had he known it, to the two old ladies, his cousins, Sir Timothy’s half-sisters, who were seated beside the great log fire, and who regarded him with approving eyes.  For their stranger cousin had that extreme gentleness and courtesy of manner and regard, which sometimes accompanies unusual strength, whether of character or of person.