He was a good deal annoyed by this vagueness; it meant he would have to hurry, a thing he hated and did very badly; and, perhaps, entirely without reason, too, for she might be three hours gone; though, equally of course, only two, or perhaps--she was capable of anything unpleasant and unexpected--only one. He began to dress as quickly as he could; but, owing to long habit of doing it as slowly as he could so as to postpone more arduous tasks, that was not very fast. He wished he had known sooner that Julia was going to Halgrave, he would have begun getting up before this; he would even have got to breakfast if only she had let him know; so he fumed to himself as he shuffled about, dropping things with his shaking fingers. At last he was dressed and came down-stairs to find Johnny, pink and apologetic as he used to be in the Marbridge days, laboriously doing odd jobs which did not need doing. There was not a detective lost in Mr. Gillat, he had not the making of a sleuth-hound in him; or even a watch-dog, except, perhaps, of that well-meaning kind which gets itself perennially kicked for incessant and incurable tail wagging at inopportune times. The half-hour which followed Captain Polkington's coming down-stairs was a trying one. The Captain went to the back door to look out; Mr. Gillat followed him, though scarcely like his shadow; he was not inconspicuous, and neither he nor his motive were easy to overlook. The Captain said something approbious about the weather and the high wind and occasional heavy swishes of rain; then he went to the sitting-room which lay behind the kitchen, and near to the front door. Johnny followed him, and the Captain faced round on him, irritably demanding what the devil he wanted. "To--to see if the register is shut," Mr. Gillat said, beaming at his own deep diplomacy and the brilliancy of the idea which had come to him--rather tardily, it is true, still in time to pass muster. The Captain flung himself into a chair with a sigh of irritation. "It is a funny thing I can't be let alone a moment," he said. "I came in here for a little quiet and coolness, I didn't want you dodging after me." "No," Johnny agreed amiably; "no, of course not." Then, after a long pause, as if he had just made sure of the fact, "It is cool in here." It was, very; it might even have been called cold and raw, for there had not been a fire there for days, but the Captain did not move, and Johnny, stooping by the fire-place, examined the register of the chimney, fondly believing in his own impenetrable deceptiveness. "I can't help thinking it ought to be shut," he observed, looking thoughtfully up the chimney; "the rain will come down; it might rain a good deal if the wind were to drop." "The wind is not going to drop for hours," the Captain snapped; "it is getting higher."