A secret fear had seized my husband that the old woman, whom I had now got to trust quite absolutely, might after all have remained from first to last a spy of Hubert's. As Eustace left he turned round and said, "Remember what you have in your pocket, Penelope; and if I do not return within ten minutes, come down the main staircase and sing the first bars of '_Phyllis plus avare que tendre_' I shall be on the watch for it." I hated his foolish obstinacy: far better, I thought, have awaited Davies in the appointed place, and together. I thought so all the more when, after some ten minutes had elapsed, a light rap came on the wainscot door near my bed, the door leading to the back staircase, and opposite to the one by which Eustace had taken his departure. "Come in, Davies," I said joyfully. "It is not Davies, dear Lady Brandling," said a voice which made me feel suddenly sick; and in came Hubert, bowing. He was dressed with uncommon neatness, not in his fisherman's clothes, but as a clergyman, and, what was by no means constantly the case with him, he was fresh shaven. In a flash I understood that he had returned overnight, or perhaps not gone away at all. "It is not Davies," he repeated, "but I have come with her excuses to your ladyship; a sudden ailment, and one from which it is not usual to recover at her, or indeed, any age, prevents her waiting on you. I have been giving her some of the consolations of religion, and hearing her confession, a practice I by no means reject as Popish," and the villain smiled suavely. "And now, as she can no longer benefit by my presence, I thought I would come and make her excuses, and offer myself, though unskilful, to pack your ladyship's portmanteau in her place."