Taverner and she were now face to face without witnesses. The soft warm mist had changed to rain, that now pattered against the window. The room was wholly unfurnished. There was not a chair in it nor a table. Taverner had originally intended it as an office, but as he received few visitors he had come to use the parlour as reception room and office, and had made this apartment, cut from the hall, into a receptacle for lumber. A range of pegs on the wall supported old saddles and the gear of cart-horses, and branches of beanstalks, that had been hung there to dry for the preservation of seed. An unpleasant, stale odour hung about the room. The grate had not been used for many years, and was rusty; rain had brought the soot down the chimney, and, as there was no fender, had spluttered it over the floor. The window panes were dirty, and cobwebs hung in the corners of the room from the ceiling—old cobwebs thick with dust. Moths had eaten into the stuffing of the saddles, and, disturbed by the current of air from the door, fluttered about. In the corner was a heap of sacks, with nothing in them, smelling of earth and tar. ’I’ve served you faithful as a dog,’ said Mrs. Veale. ’Faithful as a dog,’ she repeated; ’watched for you, wakeful as an owl.’ ’And like a dog snarl and snap at me with poisoned fangs,’ retorted Mr. Langford. ’Stand there!’ He pointed to a place opposite him, so that the light from the window fell on her, and his own face was in darkness. ’Tell me the truth; what have you done to this broth?’ ’If you think there’s harm in it, throw it away,’ said Mrs. Veale. ’No, I will not. I will send it to Okehampton and have it analysed. Do you know what that means? Examined whether there be anything in it but good juice of meat and water and toast.’ ’There’s mace,’ said the woman; ’I put in mace to spice it, and pepper and salt.’ ’Anything else? What do you keep in yellow paper, and in the china dog?’ ’Mace—every cook puts mace in soup. If you don’t like it throw it away, and I will make you some without.’ ’Mrs. Veale, so there’s nothing further in the soup?’ ’Nothing.’ ’You warned me that a corpse-candle was coming to the door—nay, you said you had seen it travel up the road and dance on the step, and that same night I was taken ill.’ ’Well, did I bring the corpse-light? It came of itself.’