“They are valuable?” he asked, as Melrose still sat absorbed.

“They are,” was the curt reply.

“I am glad they have fallen into such good hands.  They show I think”—­the speaker smiled amicably—­“that we have not to do with any mere penniless adventurer.  His friends are probably at this moment extremely anxious about him.  I hope we may soon get some clue to them.  Now”—­the voice sharpened to the practical note—­“may I appeal to you, Mr. Melrose, to make arrangements for the nurses as soon as is convenient to you.  Their wants are very simple—­two beds—­plain food—­small amount of attendance—­and some means of communicating without too much delay with myself, or the chemist.  I promise they shall give as little trouble as possible!”

Melrose rose slowly without replying.  He took a bunch of keys from is pocket, and opened one of the drawers in the Riesener table.  As he did so, the drawer, under a stream of sunset light from the window beyond it, seemed to give out a many-coloured flash—­a rapid Irislike effect, lost in a moment.  The impression made on Undershaw was that the drawer already contained gems like those in the case—­or jewels—­or both.

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.  For to-night, I consent—­for to-night only, mind you—­reserving entirely my liberty of action for to-morrow.”

Undershaw nodded, and they left the room together.

Dixon and Mrs. Dixon were both waiting in the passage outside, watching for Melrose, and hanging on his aspect.  To their amazement they were told that a room was to be got ready for the nurses, a girl was to be fetched to wait on them from the farm, and food was to be cooked.

The faces of both the old servants showed instant relief.  Dixon went off to the farm, and Mrs. Dixon flew to her kitchen.  She was getting old, and the thought of the extra work to be done oppressed her.  Nevertheless after these years of solitude, passed as it were in a besieged camp—­Threlfall and its inmates against the world—­this new and tardy contact with humanity, this momentary return to neighbourly, kindly ways brought with it a strange sweetness.  And when night fell, and a subdued, scarcely perceptible murmur of life began to creep about the passages of the old house, in general so dead and silent, Mrs. Dixon might have been heard hoarsely crooning an old song to herself as she went to and fro in the kitchen.  All the evening she and Dixon were restless, inventing work, when work was finished, running from yard to house and house to yard, calling to each other without reason, and looking at each other with bewildered eyes.  They were like beetles under a stone, when the stone is suddenly lifted.