Next morning Sir Tancred asked Dorothy to take the children to Nice for
a few days, since he had heard that there was some fever at one of the
smaller hotels. He watched over their departure himself, and Tinker
was aware of an indefinable something in his manner which puzzled him.
It was, perhaps, that something which gave him a curious, unsettled
feeling, as if they were going on a much longer journey. As they left
the hotel, Lord Crosland came up from the Condamine carrying a square
case under his arm; it did not escape Tinker's observant eye; but in
the bustle of their removal he gave it but scant attention. In the
evening Dorothy noticed that he was restless and absent-minded, and
asked him what was the matter.
"I don't know," he said; "I have a funny feeling as though something
was going to happen, and I can't think of anything. It's just as if
I'd missed something I ought to have noticed. It always makes me
uncomfortable. Yet I can't think what it can be."
She made many suggestions, but to no purpose, and he went to bed
dissatisfied. He awoke once or twice in the night--a very rare thing
with him; possibly, so close was their kinship, his father's disturbed
spirit in some obscure and mysterious fashion was striving to warn him,
or prepare him for calamitous tidings.
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