“Wait a little,” said Lady Lydiard, “I haven’t done surprising you yet.  You have been a boy here in a page’s livery, I think?  Well, he is a good boy; and he has gone home for a week’s holiday with his friends.  The proper person to supply his place with the boots and shoes and other small employments, is of course the youngest footman, a lad only a few years older than himself.  What do you think Moody does?  Engages a stranger, with the house full of idle men-servants already, to fill the page’s place.  At intervals this morning I heard them wonderfully merry in the servants hall—­so merry that the noise and laughter found its way upstairs to the breakfast-room.  I like my servants to be in good spirits; but it certainly did strike me that they were getting beyond reasonable limits.  I questioned my maid, and was informed that the noise was all due to the jokes of the strangest old man that ever was seen.  In other words, to the person whom my steward had taken it on himself to engage in the page’s absence.  I spoke to Moody on the subject.  He answered in an odd, confused way, that he had exercised his discretion to the best of his judgment and that (if I wished it), he would tell the old man to keep his good spirits under better control.  I asked him how he came to hear of the man.  He only answered, ’By accident, my Lady’—­and not one more word could I get out of him, good or bad.  Moody engages the servants, as you know; but on every other occasion he has invariably consulted me before an engagement was settled.  I really don’t feel at all sure about this person who has been so strangely introduced into the house—­he may be a drunkard or a thief.  I wish you would speak to Moody yourself, Mr. Troy.  Do you mind ringing the bell?”

Mr. Troy rose, as a matter of course, and rang the bell.

He was by this time, it is needless to say, convinced that Moody had not only gone back to consult Old Sharon on his own responsibility, but worse still, had taken the unwarrantable liberty of introducing him, as a spy, into the house.  To communicate this explanation to Lady Lydiard would, in her present humor, be simply to produce the dismissal of the steward from her service.  The only other alternative was to ask leave to interrogate Moody privately, and, after duly reproving him, to insist on the departure of Old Sharon as the one condition on which Mr. Troy would consent to keep Lady Lydiard in ignorance of the truth.

“I think I shall manage better with Moody, if your Ladyship will permit me to see him in private,” the lawyer said.  “Shall I go downstairs and speak with him in his own room?”

“Why should you trouble yourself to do that?” said her Ladyship.  “See him here; and I will go into the boudoir.”

As she made that reply, the footman appeared at the drawing-room door.

“Send Moody here,” said Lady Lydiard.

The footman’s answer, delivered at that moment, assumed an importance which was not expressed in the footman’s words.  “My Lady,” he said, “Mr. Moody has gone out.”