A turn in the road brought Threlfall into view.  The new agent sat with folded arms, gazing at the distant outline, and steadily pulling himself together to meet the ordeal of the evening.  It was by Melrose’s own wish he had drawn up a careful scheme of the alterations and improvements which seemed to him imperatively necessary in the financial interests of the estate; and he had added to it a statement—­very cautious and diplomatic—­of the various public and private quarrels in which Melrose was now concerned, with suggestions as to what could be done to straighten them out.  With regard to two or three of them litigation was already going on; had, indeed, been going on interminably.  Faversham was certain that with a little good-will and a very moderate amount of money he could settle the majority of them in a week.

So far Melrose had been fairly amenable—­had given a curt assent, for instance, to the conditions on which Faversham had proposed to relet two of the vacant farms, and to one or two other changes.  But Faversham realized that he possessed no true knowledge of the old man’s mind and temperament.  Exultant though he often felt in his new office, and the preposterously large salary attached to it, he reminded himself constantly that he trod on unsure ground.  Once or twice he had been conscious of a strange sense as of some couchant beast beside him ready to spring; also of some curious weakening and disintegration in Melrose, even since he had first known him.  He seemed to be more incalculable, less to be depended on.  His memory was often faulty, and his irritability hardly sane.

Faversham indeed was certain, from his own observation, that the mere excitement of opening and exploring the huge collections he had accumulated, during these twenty years, in the locked rooms of the house, had imposed a sharp nervous strain on a man now past seventy, who for all the latter part of his life had taken no exercise and smoked incessantly.

Supposing he were suddenly to fall ill and die—­what would happen to the house and its collections, or to the immense fortune, the proportions of which the new agent was now slowly beginning to appreciate?  All sorts of questions with regard to the vanished wife and child were now rising insistently in Faversham’s mind.  Were they really dead, and if so, how and where?  Once or twice, since his acceptance of the agency, Melrose had repeated to him with emphasis:  “I am alone in the world.”  Dixon and his wife preserved an absolute silence on the subject, and loyalty to his employer forbade Faversham to question them or any other of Melrose’s dependents.  It struck him, indeed, that Mrs. Dixon had shown a curious agitation when, that morning, Faversham had conveyed to her Melrose’s instructions to prepare a certain room on the first floor as the agent’s future bedroom.

“Aye, sir, aye—­but it wor Mrs. Melrose’s room,” she had said, looking down, her lip twitching a little, her old hands fumbling with the strings of her apron.