pened the drawing room door, something which struck her as a
little odd happened. Her two visitors, the murmur of whose voices she had
heard in deep, eager converse while she was stepping across her hall,
abruptly stopped talking, and she wondered uneasily what they could have
been saying that neither wished her to hear.

As a matter of fact that sudden silence was owing to a kindly,
old-fashioned, wholly "ladylike" instinct, on the part of the two older
women. Miss Crofton had been talking of her brother's death, confiding
to Miss Pendarth her desire to learn something more as to how it had
actually come about. With what was for her really eager sympathy, Miss
Pendarth had offered to write to a friend in Essex, in order to discover
the name of the local paper where, without doubt, a full account of the
inquest on Colonel Crofton must have been published.

CHAPTER XIV

Saturday, Sunday, Monday, slipped away, and on Tuesday there seemed no
reason why Godfrey Radmore should leave Old Place. And so he stayed on,
nominally from day to day, settling down, as none of them would have
thought possible that anyone now a stranger could settle down, to the
daily round and common task of the life led by the Tosswill family. After
two or three days he even began to take command of the younger ones, and
Janet was secretly amused to see how he shamed both Rosamund and Dolly
into doing something like their full share of the housework.

In relation to the two younger girls, his attitude was far more that
of a good-natured, rather cynical, elder brother than was his attitude
to Betty. Into her special department, the kitchen, he seldom intruded,
though when he did so it was to real purpose. Thus, Dolly's twentieth
birthday was made by him the excuse for ordering from a famous London
caterer a hamper containing enough cold and half-cooked food to keep them
junketing for two or three days. Janet was rather puzzled to note that
Betty, alone of them all, seemed to look askance at the way Radmore spent
his substance in showering fairy-godfather-like gifts on the inmates of
Old Place.

The happiest of them all was Timmy. Most men would have been bored by
having so much of a child's company, but Radmore was touched and
flattered by the boy's devotion, and that though there was a side of his
godson which puzzled and disturbed him. Now and again Timmy would say
something which made Radmore wonder for a moment if he had heard the
word