The maid who responded to Mr. Hawke’s summons was in perfect harmony with the general appearance of the house. In addition, however, to being elderly and faded, she was also remarkably sour-visaged, and carried herself as if she thought that Mr. Hawke had taken a great liberty in thus commanding her attendance.
In dignified silence she showed Loveday over the topmost story, where the servants’ bed-rooms were situated, and with a somewhat supercilious expression of countenance, watched her making various entries in her note-book.
In dignified silence, also, she led the way down to the second floor, where were the principal bed-rooms of the house.
“This is Miss Monroe’s room,” she said, as she threw back a door of one of these rooms, and then shut her lips with a snap, as if they were never going to open again.
The room that Loveday entered was, like the rest of the house, furnished in the style that prevailed in the early Victorian period. The bedstead was elaborately curtained with pink lined upholstery; the toilet-table was befrilled with muslin and tarlatan out of all likeness to a table. The one point, however, that chiefly attracted Loveday’s attention was the extreme neatness that prevailed throughout the apartment—a neatness, however, that was carried out with so strict an eye to comfort and convenience that it seemed to proclaim the hand of a first-class maid. Everything in the room was, so to speak, squared to the quarter of an inch, and yet everything that a lady could require in dressing lay ready to hand. The dressing-gown lying on the back of a chair had footstool and slippers beside it. A chair stood in front of the toilet table, and on a small Japanese table to the right of the chair were placed hair-pin box, comb and brush, and hand mirror.
“This room will want money spent upon it,” said Loveday, letting her eyes roam critically in all directions. “Nothing but Moorish wood-work will take off the squareness of those corners. But what a maid Miss Monroe must have. I never before saw a room so orderly and, at the same time, so comfortable.”
This was so direct an appeal to conversation that the sour-visaged maid felt compelled to open her lips.
“I wait on Miss Monroe, for the present,” she said snappishly; “but, to speak the truth, she scarcely requires a maid. I never before in my life had dealings with such a young lady.”
“She does so much for herself, you mean—declines much assistance.”
“She’s like no one else I ever had to do with.” (This was said even more snappishly than before.) “She not only won’t be helped in dressing, but she arranges her room every day before leaving it, even to placing the chair in front of the looking glass.”
“And to opening the lid of the hair-pin box, so that she may have the pins ready to her hand,” added Loveday, for a moment bending over the Japanese table, with its toilet accessories.
Another five minutes were all that Loveday accorded to the inspection of this room. Then, a little to the surprise of the dignified maid, she announced her intention of completing her survey of the bed-rooms some other time, and dismissed her at the drawing-room door, to tell Mr. Hawke that she wished to see him before leaving.
Mr. Hawke, looking much disturbed and with a telegram in his hand, quickly made his appearance.
“From my wife, to say she’ll be back to-night. She’ll be at Waterloo in about half an hour from now,” he said, holding up the brown envelope. “Now, Miss Brooke, what are we to do? I told you how much Mrs. Hawke objected to the investigation of this matter, and she is very—well—firm when she once says a thing, and—and—”