‘They’ve quarrelled!’ said Margaret decisively.

Alice Gaddesden, because it was Margaret’s opinion, disagreed.  There was nothing to show it, she said.  Aubrey had been quite calm.  Desmond broke out, ‘Did you ever see Aubrey anything else?’ Pamela said nothing, but she slipped out to tell Forest about the pony-cart.

Meanwhile the Rector had looked at his watch, and came up to take his leave.

‘Has the Squire gone to bed?’ he said cheerfully.  ’I daresay.  He works so hard.  Give him my fare-wells.’

And he went off, quite aware, both from his knowledge of the family and of the Squire’s recent actions, that there were storms brewing in the old house, but on the whole thinking more of the new secretary than of his old friends.  A charming woman!—­most capable!  For the first time he might get some attention paid to the village people.  That child with the shocking bow-legs.  Poor little Pamela had tried to do her best.  But this woman would see to it; she knew how to get things done.

Meanwhile, as the rest of the party dispersed, Forest brought a message to Elizabeth.  ’The Squire would be glad if you would spare him a few minutes, Miss, in the library.  He won’t keep you long.’

Elizabeth went unwillingly.

* * * * *

The library was in darkness, except for one small lamp at the further end, and the Squire was walking up and down.  He stopped abruptly as he saw his secretary.

’I won’t keep you, Miss Bremerton, but do you happen to know at all where my will is?’

‘Your will, Mr. Mannering?’ said Elizabeth in amazement.  ’No, indeed!  I have never seen it.’

‘Well, it’s somewhere here,’ said the Squire impatiently.  ’I should have thought in all your rummagings lately you must have come across it.  I took it away from those robbers, my old solicitors, and I wasn’t going to give it to the new man—­don’t trust him particularly not to talk.  So I locked it up here—­somewhere.  And I can’t find it.’  And he began restlessly to open drawer after drawer, which already contained piles of letters and documents, neatly and systematically arranged, with the proper dockets and sub-headings, by Elizabeth.

‘Oh, it can’t be there!’ cried Elizabeth.  ’I know everything in those drawers.  Surely it must be in the office?’ By which she meant the small and hideously untidy room on the ground floor into which masses of papers of all dates, still unsorted, had been carted down from London.

‘It isn’t in the office!’ He was, she saw, on the brink of an outburst.  ’I put it somewhere in this room my own self!  And I should have thought by now you knew the geography of this place as well as I do!’