few minutes' conversation with Mrs. Linley, at her earliest
convenience. That was all.

The reply was returned in a form which left Yes to be inferred: "I will
receive you as soon as you have finished your breakfast."

Chapter XXVII. Resolution.

Having read Mrs. Linley's answer, Mr. Sarrazin looked out of the
breakfast-room window, and saw that the fog had reached the cottage.
Before Mrs. Presty could make any remark on the change in the weather,
he surprised her by an extraordinary question.

"Is there an upper room here, ma'am, which has a view of the road before
your front gate?"

"Certainly!"

"And can I go into it without disturbing anybody?"

Mrs. Presty said, "Of course!" with an uplifting of her eye brows which
expressed astonishment not unmixed with suspicion. "Do you want to go up
now?" she added, "or will you wait till you have had your breakfast?"

"I want to go up, if you please, before the fog thickens. Oh, Mrs.
Presty, I am ashamed to trouble you! Let the servant show me the room."

No. For the first time in her life Mrs. Presty insisted on doing
servant's duty. If she had been crippled in both legs her curiosity
would have helped her to get up the stairs on her hands. "There!" she
said, opening the door of the upper room, and placing herself exactly in
the middle of it, so that she could see all round her: "Will that do for
you?"

Mr. Sarrazin went to the window; hid himself behind the curtain; and
cautiously peeped out. In half a minute he turned his back on the misty
view of the road, and said to himself: "Just what I expected."

Other women might have asked what this mysterious proceeding meant.
Mrs. Presty's sense of her own dignity adopted a system of independent
discovery. To Mr. Sarrazin's amusement, she imitated him to his face.
Advancing to the window, she, too, hid herself behind the curtain, and
she, too, peeped out. Still following her model, she next turned her
back on the view--and then she became herself again. "Now we have both
looked out of window," she said to the lawyer, in her own inimitably
impudent way, "suppose we compare our impressions."

This was easily done. They had both seen the same two men walking
backward and forward, opposite the front gate of the cottage. Before
the advancing fog made it impossible to identify him, Mr. Sarrazin
had recognized in one of the men his agreeable fellow-traveler on the
journey from London. The other man--a stranger--was i