At this moment Mr. Pike and his comments were interrupted, and he drew back from the table on which the body was lying; but not before Lord Hartledon had seen him touching the face of the dead.

“What are you doing?” came the stern demand.

“I wasn’t harming him,” was the answer; and Mr. Pike seemed to have suddenly returned to his roughness.  “It’s a nasty accident to have happened; and I don’t like this.”

He pointed to the temple as he spoke.  Lord Hartledon’s usually good-natured brow—­at present a brow of deep sorrow—­contracted with displeasure.

“It is an awful accident,” he replied.  “But I asked what you were doing here?”

“I thought I’d like to look upon him, sir; and the butler let me in.  I wish I’d been a bit nearer the place at the time:  I’d have saved him, or got drowned myself.  Not much fear of that, though.  I’m a rat for the water.  Was that done fairly?” pointing again to the temple.

“What do you mean?” exclaimed Val.

“Well—­it might be, or it might not.  One who has led the roving life I have, and been in all sorts of scenes, bred in the slums of London too, looks on the suspicious side of these things.  And there mostly is one in all of ’em.”

Val was moved to anger.  “How dare you hint at so infamous a suspicion, Pike?  If—­”

“No offence, my lord,” interrupted Pike—­“and it’s my lord that you are now.  Thoughts may be free in this room; but I am not going to spread suspicion outside.  I say, though that might have been an accident, it might have been done by an enemy.”

“Did you do it?” retorted Lord Hartledon in his displeasure.

Pike gave a short laugh.

“I did not.  I had no cause to harm him.  What I’m thinking was, whether anybody else had.  He was mistaken for another yesterday,” continued Pike, dropping his voice.  “Some men in his lordship’s place might have showed fight then:  even blows.”

Percival made no immediate rejoinder.  He was gazing at Pike just as fixedly as the latter gazed at him.  Did the man wish to insinuate that the unwelcome visitor had again mistaken the one brother for the other, and the result had been a struggle between them, ending in this?  The idea rushed into his mind, and a dark flush overspread his face.

“You have no grounds for thinking that man—­you know who I mean—­attacked my brother a second time?”

“No, I have no grounds for it,” shortly answered Pike.

“He was near to the spot at the time; I saw him there,” continued Lord Hartledon, speaking apparently to himself; whilst the flush, painfully red and dark, was increasing rather than diminishing.

“I know you did,” returned Pike.

The tone grated on Lord Hartledon’s ear.  It implied that the man might become familiar, if not checked; and, with all his good-natured affability, he was not one to permit it; besides, his position was changed, and he could not help feeling that it was.  “Necessity makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows,” says the very true proverb; and what might have been borne yesterday would not be borne to-day.