Monckton retired, put off his old man's disguise behind the fir-trees,
and went toward another of his hiding-places, an enormous oak-tree which
stood in the hedge of Hope's cottage garden. The subtle villain had made
this hollow tree an observatory, and a sort of sally-port, whence he
could play the fiend.
The people at the hotel were, as Mary told Julia Clifford, very
honest people.
They showed Percy Fitzroy's bracelet to one or two persons, and found it
was of great value. This made them uneasy, lest something should happen
to it under their charge; so the woman sent her husband to the
neighborhood of Clifford Hall to try and find out if there was a lady of
that name who had left it. The husband was a simple fellow, very unfit to
discharge so delicate a commission. He went at first, as a matter of
course, to the public-house; they directed him to the Hall, but he missed
it, and encountered a gentleman, whose quick eye fell upon the bracelet,
for the foolish man had shown it to so many people that now he was
carrying it in his hand, and it blazed in the meridian sun.
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