THE SILVER CORD.
BY SHIRLEY BROOKS.
.png)
CHAPTER XVIII.
The house in the avenue was a handsome one, but the ground-floor was not used by the family of Mr. Urquhart. That portion of the mansion had been appropriated by its tenant to the reception of a chaos of models of bridges, viaducts, and the hundred and one specimens of tentative inventions dear to the civil engineer, the walls being moreover covered with more or less dingy-looking plans, some of which had germinated into grand works that had suddenly called into life the dormant energies of half a dozen previously stagnant provinces—had bridged streams that for centuries had impeded the progress of commerce—had joined in an indissoluble marriage cities that were in a condition of mutual hate or sulkiness, but which, united by science, learned to know and value each other’s abilities. The nursery of these devices was a gloomy one as needed be, and withal a dusty, for what architect or engineer but proclaims an undying war to the domestic broom? It would have been a bad day for the she-menial in Mr. Urquhart’s house when she dared to enter these stern vault-like rooms without his special order. The suite of apartments on the first floor comprised dining and drawing-rooms, and a pretty little boudoir furnished with almost lavish richness. On the next floor were the principal bed-rooms, and at one end of it, and over the boudoir, was the small chamber which Mrs. Lygon had desired might be assigned to herself. The sisters were admitted by Angelique, and in reply to Mrs. Urquhart’s inquiry for Henderson, she was told that the latter had gone out to make some purchases.
The strictest not-at-home order having been given, the sisters were about to go up to the little bed-room, when Mrs. Lygon said:
“See whether my note is not here, Bertha.”
Bertha shook her head, but Mrs. Lygon, passing through the rooms, and glancing at the tables in each, speedily detected the note lying on a chair in the boudoir.
“Here it is, dear,” she said, with a smile.
Bertha looked at her earnestly for a moment, closed her own eyes as if in thought, and then repeated the gesture of disbelief.
“Let us go up-stairs,” she said.
Mrs. Lygon followed her in silence, and they entered the daintily furnished little room, which