"It is very lonely here," said Sarah, looking
round her distrustfully. "Much lonelier
than it used to be."

"Is it only to tell me what I can see for
myself, that you are stopping now?" asked
Uncle Joseph, whose inveterate cheerfulness
would have been proof against the solitude
of Sahara itself.

"No, no!" she answered, in a quick,
anxious whisper." But the bell we must
ring at is so close—only round there—I
should like to know what we are to say when
we come face to face with the servant. You
told me it was time enough to think about
that when we were, at the door. Uncle!
we are all but at the door now. What shall
we do?"

"The first thing to do," said Uncle Joseph,
shrugging his shoulders, "is surely to ring."

"Yes—but when the servant comes, what
are we to say?"

"Say?" repeated Uncle Joseph, knitting
his eyebrows quite fiercely with the effort of
thinking, and rapping his forehead with his
forefinger, just under his hat. "Say? Stop,
stop, stop, stop. Ah! I have got it! I know!
Make yourself quite easy, Sarah. The moment
the door is opened, all the speaking to the
servant shall be done by me."

"O, how you relieve me! What shall
you say?"

"Say? This;—'How do you do? We
have come to see the house.'"

When he had disclosed that remarkable
expedient for effecting an entrance into
Porthgenna Tower, he spread out both his
hands interrogatively, drew back several
paces from his niece, and looked at her with
the serenely self-satisfied air of a man who
has leapt, at one mental bound, from a doubt
to a discovery.

Sarah gazed at him in astonishment. The
expression of absolute conviction on his face
staggered her. The poorest of all the poor
excuses for gaining admission into the house,
which she herself had thought of, and had
rejected, during the previous night, seemed
like the very perfection of artifice by
comparison with such a childishly simple
expedient as that suggested by Uncle Joseph.
And yet there he stood, apparently quite
convinced that he had hit on the means of
smoothing away all obstacles at once. Not
knowing what to say, not believing sufficiently
in the validity of her own doubts to
venture on openly expressing an opinion
either one way or the other, she took the
last refuge that was now left open to her—
she endeavoured to gain time.

"It is very, very good of you, uncle, to
take all the difficulty of speaking to the
servant on your own shoulders," she said;
the hidden despondency at her heart,
expressing itself, in spite of her, in the faintness
of her voice, and the forlorn perplexity of
her eyes. "But would you mind waiting a
little before we ring at the door, and walking
up and down for a few minutes by the side of
this wall, where nobody is likely to see us?
I want to get a little more time to prepare
myself for the trial that I have to go
through; and—and in case the servant
makes any difficulties about letting us in—I
mean difficulties that we cannot just now
anticipate—would it not be as well to think
of something else to say at the door?
Perhaps, if you were to consider again——"

"There is not the least need," interposed
Uncle Joseph. "I have only to speak to the
servant, and—crick! crack!—you will see
that we shall get in. But, I will walk up and
down as long as you please. There is no
reason, because I have done all my thinking
in one moment, that you should have done
all your thinking in one moment, too. No,
no, no—no reason at all." Saying those words
with a patronising air, and a self-satisfied
smile, which would have been irresistibly
comical under any less critical circumstances,
the old man again offered his arm to his
niece, and led her back over the broken
ground that lay under the eastern wall of
Porthgenna Tower.

While Sarah was waiting in doubt outside
the walls, it happened, by a curious coincidence,
that another person, vested with the
highest domestic authority, was also waiting
in doubt inside the walls. This person was
no other than the housekeeper of Porthgenna
Tower; and the cause of her perplexity was
nothing less than the letter which had been
delivered by the postman that very morning.

It was a letter from Mrs. Frankland, which
had been written after she had held a long
conversation with her husband and Mr.
Orridge, on receiving the last fragments of
information which the doctor was able to
communicate in reference to Mrs. Jazeph.

The housekeeper had read the letter
through over and over again, and was
more puzzled and astonished by it at every
fresh reading. She was now waiting for
the return of the steward, Mr. Munder,
from his occupations out of doors, with the
intention of taking his opinion on the singular
communication which she had received
from her mistress.

While Sarah and her uncle were still
walking up and down outside the eastern
wall, Mr. Munder entered the housekeeper's
room. He was one of those tall, grave,
benevolent-looking men, with a conical head,
a deep voice, a slow step, and a heavy
manner, who passively contrive, by some
inscrutable process, to get a great
reputation for wisdom without the trouble of
saying or doing anything to deserve it.
All round the Porthgenna neighbourhood,
the steward was popularly spoken of as a
remarkably sound, sensible man; and the
housekeeper, although a sharp woman in
other matters, in this one respect shared
to a large extent in the general delusion.