“Moody,” said Felix, in his lazily-cynical way, “do you think if you or I were in a fit that her Ladyship would run?  Bah! these are the things that shake one’s faith in human nature.  I feel infernally seedy.  That cursed Channel passage—­I tremble in my inmost stomach when I think of it.  Get me something, Moody.”

“What shall I send you, sir?” Moody asked coldly.

“Some dry curacoa and a biscuit.  And let it be brought to me in the picture-gallery.  Damn the dog!  I’ll go and look at Hobbema.”

This time he succeeded in reaching the archway, and disappeared behind the curtains of the picture-gallery.

CHAPTER IV.

Left alone in the drawing-room, Moody looked at the unfastened envelope on the table.

Considering the value of the inclosure, might he feel justified in wetting the gum and securing the envelope for safety’s sake?  After thinking it over, Moody decided that he was not justified in meddling with the letter.  On reflection, her Ladyship might have changes to make in it or might have a postscript to add to what she had already written.  Apart too, from these considerations, was it reasonable to act as if Lady Lydiard’s house was a hotel, perpetually open to the intrusion of strangers?  Objects worth twice five hundred pounds in the aggregate were scattered about on the tables and in the unlocked cabinets all round him.  Moody withdrew, without further hesitation, to order the light restorative prescribed for himself by Mr. Sweetsir.

The footman who took the curacoa into the picture gallery found Felix recumbent on a sofa, admiring the famous Hobbema.

“Don’t interrupt me,” he said peevishly, catching the servant in the act of staring at him.  “Put down the bottle and go!” Forbidden to look at Mr. Sweetsir, the man’s eyes as he left the gallery turned wonderingly towards the famous landscape.  And what did he see?  He saw one towering big cloud in the sky that threatened rain, two withered mahogany-colored trees sorely in want of rain, a muddy road greatly the worse for rain, and a vagabond boy running home who was afraid of the rain.  That was the picture, to the footman’s eye.  He took a gloomy view of the state of Mr. Sweetsir’s brains on his return to the servants’ hall.  “A slate loose, poor devil!” That was the footman’s report of the brilliant Felix.

Immediately on the servant’s departure, the silence in the picture-gallery was broken by voices penetrating into it from the drawing-room.  Felix rose to a sitting position on the sofa.  He had recognized the voice of Alfred Hardyman saying, “Don’t disturb Lady Lydiard,” and the voice of Moody answering, “I will just knock at the door of her Ladyship’s room, sir; you will find Mr. Sweetsir in the picture-gallery.”