There it was. As I have always taken it. Laurence had never in his life lied to this man. He found, standing in the wet yard, that he did not intend to begin now; and he found also that he did not intend to answer.
"Come into the house, sir," he said. "You're grey to the lips. Have something hot, and breakfast, and an hour by the fire. Then we'll talk."
Sir Roland's eyes narrowed. He was a magistrate of thirty years' standing, and he knew the difference between a no and a door held open. For a moment Laurence thought he would insist. Then the old man's shoulders lowered, an inch only, and he put his gloves into his pocket.
"An hour," he said. "I'll have my hour. And then I will have my answer."
Laurence walked him to the house through the garden door, and saw him into the library and into the chair by the fire, and rang for coffee and for Mrs. Pollitt, and said all the proper things. Then he went out again by the back passage, through the gun room and the boot room and the yard door, and down the long row of boxes to the end, where the brown horse stood with his head over the half-door and a lantern burned low behind him.
III.
She was sitting on an upturned bucket in the corner of the box with her knees drawn up, and she did not get up when he unbolted the door.
Absalom swung his head round and showed the Earl the whites of his eyes. Harriet made her two clicks without thinking, and the horse blew out through his nostrils and went back to pulling at his hay net, and the Earl stepped inside and bolted the door behind him and stood with his back against it. The box smelled of straw and ammonia and the sweet dusty breath of the hay. The lantern on its hook made a small gold room inside the larger grey one.
"He's in the library," the Earl said. "He has given me an hour."
"He'll take two. He always says one and takes two." Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "Did you tell him?"
"No."
"Did you tell him I wasn't here?"
"No." He looked down at her. "I have never lied to him. I don't mean to start for a stranger in my stable yard. So you'll tell me who you are, and then I'll know what I'm refusing to say."