"While I am in your service, Sir Percival," I said, "I hope I know my
duty well enough not to inquire into your motives. When I am out of
your service, I hope I know my own place well enough not to speak of
matters which don't concern me--"

"When do you want to go?" he asked, interrupting me without ceremony.
"Don't suppose I am anxious to keep you--don't suppose I care about
your leaving the house. I am perfectly fair and open in this matter,
from first to last. When do you want to go?"

"I should wish to leave at your earliest convenience, Sir Percival."

"My convenience has nothing to do with it. I shall be out of the house
for good and all to-morrow morning, and I can settle your accounts
to-night. If you want to study anybody's convenience, it had better be
Miss Halcombe's. Mrs. Rubelle's time is up to-day, and she has reasons
for wishing to be in London to-night. If you go at once, Miss Halcombe
won't have a soul left here to look after her."

I hope it is unnecessary for me to say that I was quite incapable of
deserting Miss Halcombe in such an emergency as had now befallen Lady
Glyde and herself. After first distinctly ascertaining from Sir
Percival that Mrs. Rubelle was certain to leave at once if I took her
place, and after also obtaining permission to arrange for Mr. Dawson's
resuming his attendance on his patient, I willingly consented to remain
at Blackwater Park until Miss Halcombe no longer required my services.
It was settled that I should give Sir Percival's solicitor a week's
notice before I left, and that he was to undertake the necessary
arrangements for appointing my successor. The matter was discussed in
very few words. At its conclusion Sir Percival abruptly turned on his
heel, and left me free to join Mrs. Rubelle. That singular foreign
person had been sitting composedly on the door-step all this time,
waiting till I could follow her to Miss Halcombe's room.

I had hardly walked half-way towards the house when Sir Percival, who
had withdrawn in the opposite direction, suddenly stopped and called me
back.

"Why are you leaving my service?" he asked.

The question was so extraordinary, after what had just passed between
us, that I hardly knew what to say in answer to it.

"Mind! I don't know why you are going," he went on. "You must give a
reason for leaving me, I suppose, when you get another situation. What
reason? The breaking up of the family? Is that it?"

"There can b