“I suppose I broke her heart,” thought Mike; “but I’m not to blame; I couldn’t go on loving any woman for ever, not if she were Venus herself.”  And questioning the groom regarding the servants then at Belthorpe, he learnt with certain satisfaction that Fairfield had left immediately after her ladyship’s death.  The groom had never heard of Harrison (he had only been a year and a half in her ladyship’s service).

“This is Belthorpe Park, sir—­these are the lodge gates.”

Mike was disappointed in the lodge.  The park he could not distinguish.  Mist hung like a white fleece.  There were patches of ferns; hawthorns loomed suddenly into sight; high trees raised their bare branches to the brilliancy of the moon.

“Not half bad,” thought Mike, “quite a gentleman’s place.”

“Rather rough land in parts—­plenty of rabbits,” he remarked to the groom; and he won the man’s sympathies by various questions concerning the best method of getting hunters into condition.  The rooks talked gently in the branches of some elms, around which the drive turned through rough undulating ground.  Plantations became numerous; tall, spire-like firs appeared, their shadows floating through the interspaces; and, amid straight walks and dwarf yews, in the fulness of the moonlight, there shone a white house, with large French windows and a tower at the further end.  A white peacock asleep on a window-sill startled Mike, and he thought of the ghost of his dead mistress.

Nor could he account for his trepidation as he waited for the front door to open, and Hunt seemed to him aggressively large and pompous, and he would have preferred an assumption on the part of the servant that he knew the relative positions of the library and drawing-room.  But Hunt was resolved on explanation, and as they went up-stairs he pointed out the room where Lady Seeley died, and spoke of the late Earl.  “You want the sack and you shall get it, my friend,” thought Mike, and he glanced hurriedly at the beautiful pieces of furniture about the branching staircase and the gallery leading into the various corridors.  At dinner he ate without noticing the choiceness of the cooking, and he drank several glasses of champagne before he remarked the excellence of the wine.

“We have not many dozen left, sir; I heard that his lordship laid it down in ’75.”

Hunt watched him with cat-like patience and hound-like sagacity, and seeing he had forgotten his cigar-case, he instantly produced a box.  Mike helped himself without daring to ask where the cigars came from, nor did he comment on their fragrance.  He smoked in discomfort; the presence of the servant irritated him, and he walked into the library and shut the door.  The carved panelling, in the style of the late Italian renaissance, was dark and shadowy, and the eyes of the portraits looked upon the intruder.  Men in armour, holding scrolls; men in rich doublets, their hands on their swords; women in elaborate dresses