“Sir Henry himself is quite aware of that.  I have already spoken quite plainly and openly to him, and suggested my departure from Glencardine on account of ill-natured remarks by her ladyship’s enemies.  But he would not hear of my leaving, and pressed me to remain.”

Krail looked at him in blank surprise.  “Well,” he said, “if you’ve been bold enough to do this in face of the gossip, then you’re a much cleverer man than ever I took you to be.”

For answer, Flockart took some letters from his breast-pocket, selected one written in a foreign hand, and gave it to Krail to read.  It was from the hermit of Glencardine, written at his dictation by Monsieur Goslin, and was couched in the warmest and most confidential terms.

“Look here, James,” exclaimed the shabby man, handing back the letter, “I’m going to be perfectly frank with you.  Tell me if I speak the truth or if I lie.  It is neither affection nor friendship which links your life with that woman’s.  Am I right?”

Flockart did not answer for some moments.  His eyes were cast upon the ground.  “Yes, Krail,” he admitted at last when the question had been put to him a second time—­“yes, Krail.  You speak the truth.  It is neither affection nor friendship.”

CHAPTER XXV

SHOWS GABRIELLE IN EXILE

Midway between historic Fotheringhay and ancient Apethorpe, the ancestral seat of the Earls of Westmorland, lay the long, straggling, and rather poverty-stricken village of Woodnewton.  Like many other Northamptonshire villages, it consisted of one long street of cottages, many of them with dormer windows peeping from beneath the brown thatch, the better houses of stone, with old mullioned windows, but all of them more or less in stages of decay.  With the depreciation in agriculture, Woodnewton, once quite a prosperous little place, was now terribly shabby and depressing.

As he entered the village, the first object that met the eye of the stranger was a barn with the roof half fallen away, and next it a ruined house with its moss-grown thatch full of holes.  The paving was ill-kept, and even the several inns bore an appearance of struggles with poverty.

Half-way up the long, straight, dispiriting street stood a cottage larger and neater-looking than the rest.  Its ugly exterior was half-hidden by ivy, which had been cut away from the diamond-paned windows; while, unlike its neighbours, its roof was tiled and its brown door newly painted and highly varnished.

Old Miss Heyburn lived there, and had lived there for the past half-century.  The prim, grey-haired, and somewhat eccentric old lady was a well-known figure to all on that country-side.  Twice each Sunday, with her large-type Prayer-book in her hand, and her steel-rimmed spectacles on her thin nose, she walked to church, while she was one of the principal supporters of the village clothing-club and such-like institutions inaugurated by the worthy rector.