Thomas Godolphin, straightforward and honourable, imparted to Lord Averil the fact of the deeds being missing. Whether he would have revealed it to a less intimate client at this early stage of the affair, might be a matter of speculation. The house would not yet call them lost, he said to Lord Averil: it trusted, by some fortunate accident, to put its hands upon them, in some remote pigeon-hole. Lord Averil received the communication with courteous friendliness: he thought it must prove that they had only been mislaid, and he hoped they would be found. Both gentlemen hoped that sincerely. The value of the deeds was about sixteen thousand pounds: too much for either of them to lose with equanimity. "George must have known of this when I asked him for the deeds a month ago," observed Lord Averil. "I think not," replied Thomas Godolphin. "It was your asking for the deeds which caused him to search the box for them, and he then found they were gone." "Perhaps you are right. But I remember thinking his manner peculiar." "How 'peculiar'?" inquired Thomas. "Hesitating: uncertain. He appeared, at first, not to know what I meant in asking for the deeds. Since you spoke to me of the loss, it struck me as accounting for George's manner--that he did not like to tell me of it." "He could not have known of it then," repeated Thomas Godolphin. As this concluding part of the conversation took place, they were coming out of the room. Isaac Hastings was passing along the passage, and heard a portion of it. "Are they deeds of Lord Averil's that are missing?" he inquired confidentially of Mr. Hurde, later in the day. The old clerk nodded an affirmative. "But you need not proclaim it there," he added, by way of caution, glancing sideways at the clerks. "Do you suppose I should do so?" returned Isaac Hastings. CHAPTER XIII. A RED-LETTER DAY FOR MRS. BOND. The scent of the new-mown hay was in the atmosphere around Prior's Ash. A backward spring it had been until the middle of April, and wiseacres said the crops would be late. But then the weather had suddenly burst into the warmth of summer, vegetation came on all the more rapidly for its previous tardiness, and the crops turned out to be early, instead of late.