Chapter Ten

The Osborns were breakfasting in their unpleasant sitting-room in Duke Street when Lady Walderhurst’s letter arrived.  The toast was tough and smoked, and the eggs were of the variety labelled “18 a shilling” in the shops; the apartment was also redolent of kippered herring, and Captain Osborn was scowling over the landlady’s weekly bill when Hester opened the envelope stamped with a coronet. (Each time Emily wrote a note and found herself confronting the coronet on the paper, she blushed a little and felt that she must presently awake from her dream.) Mrs. Osborn herself was looking far from amiable.  She was ill and nervous and irritable, and had, in fact, just been crying and wishing that she was dead, which had given rise to unpleasantness between herself and her husband, who was not in the mood to feel patient with nerves.

“Here’s one from the Marchioness,” she remarked slightingly.

“I have had none from the Marquis,” sneered Osborn.  “He might have condescended a reply—­the cold-blooded beggar!”

Hester was reading her letter.  As she turned the first page her expression changed.  As has previously been suggested, the epistolary methods of Lady Walderhurst were neither brilliant nor literary, and yet Mrs. Osborn seemed to be pleased by what she read.  During the reading of a line or so she wore an expression of slowly questioning wonder, which, a little later on, settled into relief.

“I can only say I think it’s very decent of them,” she ejaculated at last; “really decent!”

Alec Osborn looked up, still scowlingly.

“I don’t see any cheque,” he observed.  “That would be the most decent thing.  It’s the thing we want most, with this damned woman sending in bills like this for the fourth-rate things we live on, and for her confounded tenth-rate rooms.”

“This is better than cheques.  It means our having something we couldn’t hope for cheques enough to pay for.  They are offering to lend us a beautiful old place to live in for the rest of our stay.”

“What!” Osborn exclaimed.  “Where?”

“Near Palstrey Manor, where they are staying now.”

“Near Palstrey!  How near?” He had been slouching in his chair and now sat up and leaned forward on the table.  He was eager.

Hester referred to the letter again.

“She doesn’t say.  It is a sort of antiquity, I gather.  It’s called The Kennel Farm.  Have you ever been to Palstrey?”

“Not as a guest.”  He was generally somewhat sardonic when he spoke of anything connected with Walderhurst.  “But once I was in the nearest county town by chance and rode over.  By Jove!” starting a little, “I wonder if it can be a rum old place I passed and reined in to have a look at.  I hope it is.”

“Why?”

“It’s near enough to the Manor to be convenient.”

“Do you think,” hesitating, “that we shall see much of them?”