As he stood on the door-step Erceldonne saw he was a clergyman of the Church of Rome. Might have seen also that here was a man impossible to coerce or deceive, a strange friend for Raimond Erle; but Lord Erceldonne was not the quick-eyed man he had been. Bad dreams had wrought on his nerves. “Raimond’s friends are always welcome,” he said stiffly, “but we are indeed roughing it here,” and he cursed Raimond silently for having called the place a shooting-box when there was not a gun in the house. And there were no servants! It was enough even to make “an old friend” suspicious. “Why did you bring him?” he said, when the priest had been put in his own room for want of another habitable one. “And where have you been?” “Finding out things.” And now that they were alone his face was haggard enough. “Do you know there is five hundred reward offered for her? Some detective’s at the bottom of it, but God knows who is offering the money!” “And you stayed away all this time, knowing that?” cried Erceldonne, with uncurbed fury. “I stayed because I could not help it. I had to get some one to trust, and I had to scour all England for this man,” little knowing by what chance he had found him ready to come. “Who is he?” “He had the honor,” said Erle cynically, “of marrying me to the first Mrs. Erle!” Erceldonne cursed him up and down for a fool. “Then why, of all things, do you want him here?” he ended. “To marry me to the second. Oh, don’t waste your breath! I know what you’re going to say, but it will be legal enough this time. He had no right to do it before. I found out afterward that it was before he had entered the church. I can hold that over him if he kicks. But he won’t. He’s sorry for me, because my wife died so soon. He will tie this knot with true pleasure.” “Do you think that sullen vixen up-stairs will have it tied without raving to him? For I don’t.” Erle laughed. “I think she will,” he said suavely. “You can’t manage women with sledge-hammers--unless they love you. That’s where you go wrong! Take the priest out of the way--anywhere--round the moors, and send Beryl here to me. But don’t warn her I’m here.” Out of doors a mountain mist had fallen, and the damp twilight of it made him nervous as he waited. There would be no coercing her if the wet drove Father Maurice back before the work was done. He went to the window, and fancied he saw the black figures of his father and the priest dimly visible through the fog; and turned impatiently to go to this Vashti who would not come. But the door opened before he could reach it, and even in the twilight he started at Beryl Corselas’ eyes. “You!” she said, full of amazement not only at his presence, but at the changed look of the room, whose windows were unshuttered as she had never seen them. But it had been a week and more since she had left her bedroom, and they might well have grown careless.