looking round, saw the Baptist minister.
‘I have just come from the village,’ said Mr. Woodwell, who looked worn and weary, his boots being covered with dust; ‘and I have learnt that which confirms my fears for her.’
‘For Miss Power?’
‘Most assuredly.’
‘What danger is there?’ said Somerset.
‘The temptations of her position have become too much for her! She is going out of mourning next week, and will give a large dinner-party on the occasion; for though the invitations are partly in the name of her relative Mrs. Goodman, they must come from her. The guests are to include people of old cavalier families who would have treated her grandfather, sir, and even her father, with scorn for their religion and connections; also the parson and curate – yes, actually people who believe in the Apostolic Succession; and what’s more, they’re coming. My opinion is, that it has all arisen from her friendship with Miss De Stancy.’
‘Well,’ cried Somerset warmly, ‘this only shows liberality of feeling on both sides! I suppose she has invited you as well?’
‘She has not invited me!.. Mr. Somerset, not withstanding your erroneous opinions on important matters, I speak to you as a friend, and I tell you that she has never in her secret heart forgiven that sermon of mine, in which I likened her to the church at Laodicea. I admit the words were harsh, but I was doing my duty, and if the case arose to-morrow I would do it again. Her displeasure is a deep grief to me; but I serve One greater than she… You, of course, are invited to this dinner?’
‘I have heard nothing of it,’ murmured the young man.
Their paths diverged; and when Somerset reached the hotel he was informed that somebody was waiting to see him.
‘Man or woman?’ he asked.
The landlady, who always liked to reply in person to Somerset’s inquiries, apparently thinking him, by virtue of his drawing implements and liberality of payment, a possible lord of Burleigh, came forward and said it was certainly not a woman, but whether man or boy she could not say. ‘His name is Mr. Dare,’ she added.
‘O – that youth,’ he said.
Somerset went upstairs, along the passage, down two steps, round the angle, and so on to the rooms reserved for him in this rambling edifice of stage-coach memories, where he found Dare waiting. Dare came forward, pulling out the cutting of an advertisement.
‘Mr. Somerset, this is yours, I believe, from the Architectural World?’
Somerset said that he had inserted it.
‘I think I should suit your purpose as assistant very well.’
‘Are you an architect’s draughtsman?’
‘Not specially. I have some knowledge of the same, and want to increase it.’
‘I thought you were a photographer.’
‘Also of photography,’ said Dare with a bow. ‘Though but an amateur in that art I can challenge comparison with Regent Street or Broadway.’
Somerset looked upon his table. Two letters only, addressed in initials, were lying there as answers to his advertisement. He asked Dare to wait, and looked them over. Neither was satisfactory. On this account he overcame his slight feeling against Mr. Dare, and put a question to test that gentleman’s capacities. ‘How would you measure the front of a building, including windows, doors, mouldings, and every other feature, for a ground plan, so as to combine the greatest accuracy with the greatest despatch?’
‘In running dimensions,’ said Dare.
As this was the particular kind of work he wanted done, Somerset thought the answer promising. Coming to terms with Dare, he requested the would-be student of architecture to wait at the castle the next day, and dismissed him.
A quarter of an hour later, when Dare was taking a walk in the country, he drew from his pocket eight other letters addressed to Somerset in initials, which, to judge by their style and stationery, were from men far superior to those two whose communications alone Somerset had seen. Dare looked them over for a few seconds as he strolled on, then tore them into minute fragments, and, burying them under the leaves in the ditch, went on his way again.
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