“No,” cried Mrs. Verwin, her face alive with curiosity, “never a word did he mention of a treasure, and where——” Fuller saw that he had made a mistake in hinting a thing which was known only to the Inderwicks to this gossip, and hastened to repair his error. “I am talking of the peacock itself, which is a treasure,” he said quickly, “for it is made of gold with precious stones——” “I know, Mr. Alan, of course I know, sir, for didn’t I see it on my wedding-day forty years ago, when your dear ma, miss, was alive and well along with your late pa. My husband—poor Verwin as is dead and gone—said as he give me a wedding treat, and he takes me to see The Monastery and asked Squire Inderwick to show that blessed peacock. Oh,” Mrs. Verwin raised her fat hands and closed her eyes in ecstasy, “well may you call it a treasure, Mr. Alan, for such glitter I never did see. It was like the New Jerusalem for shine and——” “Well that is the treasure I meant, Mrs. Verwin.” “And you never spoke a truer word, Mr. Alan. But I hope sir, and you, miss, as I didn’t do wrong in telling Mr. Batch—and a pleasant gentleman, though dark, he was too—about the peacock, for it’s a story as we all know for years and years and years. The luck of the Inderwicks! Why I heard my dear, dear pa as is dead these fifty years tell all about the blessed idol, so I thought t’was no harm to let Mr. Batch know as we’d something in Belstone he hadn’t got in his own country, wherever that may be, though they do say as it’s across channel somehow, and, if he——” “You didn’t do wrong, Mrs. Verwin,” said Alan, striking in hastily, as he was anxious to get away with Marie, “and I merely asked about Mr. Bakche because he seemed to know something of Belstone.” “He know. Now I ask you, sir, what can he know, staying but for one day, and only giving an eyewink at The Monastery where he——” “Oh, he went there, did he?” asked Fuller, turning back at the door. “Yes sir, he did, saying he’d like to see such a lovely place about which I’d told him such a queer story, for queer he said was the name for the luck of the peacock. I think Mr. Batch was one of them gents who write and who ask others for things as they can’t think of themselves, to——” “Yes! Yes. Very probably, Mrs. Verwin. Thanks for answering my questions. I just did so because I chanced to meet this gentleman at Miss Grison’s.”