“I am distressed to have offended her.” “That won’t serve. I don’t want to force your hand, and Angel hath the wit to play her own game. But, d’you seek my countenance? There’s the rub.” The other broke into a smile. “Well,” said he, “I won’t pretend to misconstrue you. I’m most sincere in desiring Miss Royston’s condescension.” “Then,” said Sir David, “here’s a lovers’ quarrel toward; and ‘A swan can’t hatch without a crack of thunder’ is an old saw.” His countenance contracted portentous. “Not that I may not have a word to say by and by,” quoth he; “for I am her guardian despite her independent jointure, and by the token am determined to prudence. But, at the moment, to inquire would be premature and unjustified.” “Well, I shall hope to satisfy you,” said Mr. Tuke, with a twinkle--“and so to our goose-hunt, by grace of your permission.” CHAPTER XXVI. So far as two men could explore minutely the interior of a house so eccentrically designed--on a plan that seemed indeed to affect an absence of all design--as “Delsrop,” Mr. Tuke and his guest did explore during the whole of that winter morning. They measured walls and doors; they tapped for vaults, secret panels, or intermural recesses. They went down into the “Priest’s Hole,” and convinced themselves that no hiding-place had been contrived anywhere in that well of dank and solid masonry. They looked up chimneys; stamped on flags in hope of answering reverberations; prodded at ceilings hither and thither with a view to the discovery of some cunningly concealed hollow wherein it was possible the thing they sought might lie with all its crimson lustre quenched in dusk and darkness. And it was only a complication of the puzzle that “Delsrop’s” antecessor had left its rooms--with one exception--desolate and unfurnished; inasmuch as any chair or table or bureau would have offered itself a likelier depository for a treasure so self-contained. What could be done with bare walls and floors and ceilings but punch and measure them? This the searchers did, with all the thoroughness they could contrive, and with a proportionate absence of result. They even extended their investigations to the ruined outhouses, and to the external case of the main building itself--obviously a desperate resource. For here, long ages’ growth of matted creepers bespoke a confidence of increase that for generations had never known restraint. Dense ivy--interwoven with leafless tendons of honeysuckle--that showed lace-work of muscular adolescence through every gap in its foliage; fibrous vines, that had never been schooled to culture, and that hung out annual clusters of unfulfilled berries--a very tradition of rustic _gaucherie_ with the gentlemen starlings; winter jasmine that, when the world is wrapped in chilling reserve, protrudes a host of little red tongues in mockery of such self-importance--these, and others, contributed to such a thickset of arborescence as it were idle to attempt to penetrate.