“I had to have a good cry,” she confessed, “and I’m not ashamed of it. Harry was one of the best – you don’t mind me calling him Harry, do you, dear?” And, when Leslie shook her head: “I can’t say that I was fond of him as a young girl ought to be fond of a man she loves, but he was very nice. He had his tempers, the same as the rest of us, but they were only his high spirits. I could never understand why he hated Mr Alford.”

Leslie looked at her incredulously.

“Hated Mr Alford?” she repeated. “Surely you’re mistaken? They were very good friends.”

Mary shook her head.

“No, they weren’t,” she said. “It all arose out of her ladyship’s picture.”

“The late Lady Chelford?”

“That was the lady,” nodded Mary. “It happened three years ago. Dick Alford suggested that the portrait should be moved to the gallery. I think he was silly to say it, knowing how Harry adored his mother, and when he said the picture was depressing – and that was the silliest thing of all – Harry got right up in the air! It was dreadful, the things he said to Mr Alford – and before me too! Dick Alford realised his mistake: I could see that, and he tried to pacify Harry, but for a fortnight they didn’t speak.”

Leslie was silent. Slowly the inner life of Fossaway Manor was beginning to reveal itself to her; she had seen nothing of these cross-currents, had not suspected, even dimly, the conflicting antagonism which must have been visible to Harry Alford’s secretary.

“They were very friendly sometimes. You’d think that Harry was fond of him, and I think he was,” Mary continued; “but the quarrels used to break out every now and then, once because Dick always stood with his back to the picture, and never looked at it at all. He hated it, I’m sure of that. Of course he never took me into his confidence. We were not what you might term good friends. I suppose it was foolish of me to take up Harry’s quarrel, but I never liked Dick – you don’t mind me calling him Dick? – after that.”

She glanced nervously through the window. The sun had set, and dusk was creeping over the great park.

“If I get any sleep tonight I’ll be lucky,” she said. “Do you mind if I leave my door open and keep a light burning?”

“Why, of course not,” smiled Leslie.

“There is a lock on the door, and I asked Glover to find me the key,” Miss Wenner went on. “And I’ll tell you frankly, Leslie, that if he hadn’t found it I wouldn’t have stayed, not for all the money in the world.”