That dignitary occupies also much of the attention of Mr. Carruthers, left in dignified solitude in the dining-room before the decanters of wine and the dishes of fruit, oblivious of his wife's indisposition, and wholly unobservant of the curiosity with which Mr. Downing, his butler and body-servant, surveys him on entering the room to suggest the taking of tea. Very unusual is it for the Poynings servants to regard their master with curiosity, or indeed with any feeling that bears the semblance of interest; but, be the cause what it may, there is no mistaking the present expression of Downing's face. Surprise, curiosity, and something which, if it must be called fear, is the pleasant and excited form of that feeling, prompt Mr. Downing to look fixedly at his master, who sits back in his chair in an attitude of magisterial cogitation, twirling his heavy gold eye-glass in his bony white hands, and lost in something which resembles thought more closely than Mr. Carruthers's mental occupation can ordinarily be said to do. There he sits, until he resolves to take his niece Clare into confidence, tell her of the visit he has received from the gentleman from the Home Office, and ask her whether she can make anything of it, which resolution attained, and finding by his watch that the hour is half-past ten, and that therefore a Carruthers of Poynings may retire to rest if he chooses without indecorum, the worthy gentleman creaks upstairs to his room, and in a few minutes is sleeping the sleep of the just. Mrs. Carruthers--Clare having been some time previously dismissed from the room--also seems to sleep soundly; at least her husband has seen that her eyes are closed. Her rest, real or pretended, would have been none the calmer had she been able to see her faithful old servant pacing up and down the housekeeper's room, and wringing her withered hands in an agony of distress; for the servant who had gone to Amherst with Mr. Carruthers and his mysterious visitor in the morning had learned the meaning and purpose of the two gentlemen's visit to Evans, the tailor, and had made it the subject of a lively and sentimental conversation in the servants' hall. Although literature was not in a very flourishing condition at Amherst, the male domestics of the household at Poynings were not without their sources of information, and had thoroughly possessed themselves of the details of the murder. Mrs. Brookes had heard of the occurrence two or three times in the course of the preceding day, but she had given it little attention. She was in her own room when the servants returned with the carriage which had taken Mr. Dalrymple to the railway station, having visited her mistress for the last time that evening, and was thinking, sadly enough, of George, when the entrance of the upper housemaid, her eager face brimful of news, disturbed her. "Oh, Mrs. Brookes," she began, "do you know who that gentleman was as dined here, and went to the town with master?"