There was a faint and indefinable indication
of relief in his manner, however much he professed to be embarrassed at
the discovery. It might have been, she thought, that he was a great
friend of Mr Westray, and had been sorry to think that his room should
be littered and untidy as Mr Sharnall's certainly was, and so was glad
when he found out his mistake.

"Mr Westray's room is at the top of the house," she said deprecatingly.

"It is no trouble to me, I assure you, to go up," he answered.

Anastasia hesitated again for an instant. If there were no
gentlemen-tramps, perhaps there were gentlemen-burglars, and she hastily
made a mental inventory of Mr Westray's belongings, but could think of
nothing among them likely to act as an incentive to crime. Still she
would not venture to show a strange man to the top of the house, when
there was no one at home but herself. The stranger ought not to have
asked her. He could not be a gentleman after all, or he would have seen
how irregular was such a request, unless he had indeed some particular
motive for wishing to see Mr Westray's room.

The stranger perceived her hesitation, and read her thoughts easily
enough.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I ought, of course, to have explained
who it is who has the honour of speaking to you. I am Lord Blandamer,
and wish to write a few words to Mr Westray on questions connected with
the restoration of the church. Here is my card."

There was probably no lady in the town that would have received this
information with as great composure as did Anastasia Joliffe. Since the
death of his grandfather, the new Lord Blandamer had been a constant
theme of local gossip and surmise. He was a territorial magnate, he
owned the whole of the town, and the whole of the surrounding country.
His stately house of Fording could be seen on a clear day from the
minster tower. He was reputed to be a man of great talents and
distinguished appearance; he was not more than forty, and he was
unmarried. Yet no one had seen him since he came to man's estate; it
was said he had not been in Cullerne for twenty years.

There was a tale of some mysterious quarrel with his grandfather, which
had banished the young man from his home, and there had been no one to
take his part, for both his father and mother were drowned when he was a
baby. For a quarter of a century he had been a wanderer abroad: in
France and Germany, in Russia and Greece, in Italy and S