Raymond made no objection to this unceremonious reference to his younger brother, but the intelligence thus cavalierly conveyed to him brought a scowl to his like, and he looked up from the letter in his hand.

“I thought that ’ud fetch you,” said the retainer, sleeting his gaze with a kind of ghoulish satisfaction.

“I don’t want any damned impudence from you,” returned Raymond, moving to the table, and seating himself at the head of it.

Reuben gave a dry chuckle. Removing the lid from one of the entree dishes, he shovelled several pilchards on to a plate, and dumped this down before Raymond. “You don’t need to trouble yourself,” he observed. “Master says young Aubrey won’t get a farden out of him.” He pushed one of the toast-racks towards Raymond, and prepared to depart. “Next thing you know, we’ll have young Aubrey down here,” he said. “That’ll be clean-of that will!”

Raymond gave a short bark of sardonic laughter. Reuben, having unburdened himself of all the information at present at his disposal, took himself off, just as Clara Hastings came in from the garden, and entered the dining-room.

It would have been hard for anyone, casually encountering Clara, to have made an accurate guess at her age. She was, in fact, sixty-three years old, but although her harsh-featured countenance was wrinkled and weather-beaten, her untidy locks were only streaked with grey, and her limbs had the elasticity of a much younger woman’s. She was a tall, angular creature, and, rather unexpectedly, looked her best in the saddle. She had strong, bony hands, generally grimed with dirt, since she was an enthusiastic gardener, and rarely took the trouble to protect her hands with gloves. Her skirts never hung evenly round her, and since she wore them unfashionably long, and was continually catching her heels in them, their hems often sagged where the stitches had been rent.