"Stephen Orme's place," replied Mr. Wordley, in rather a low voice.
"Oh," said Mr. Hartley, with a nod which struck Ida as being peculiarly
expressive and significant, though she did not know what it implied.
The three went all over the old Hall and after lunch the great
architect explained, with the aid of a sheet of paper and a pencil, his
idea of what should be done.
"There need not be, there should not be, the least addition," he said.
"What you want to do, Miss Heron, is, as Mr. Wordley says, restore:
restore with all reverence. It is a superb piece of architecture of its
kind and it must be touched with a gentle hand. If you are prepared to
leave it all to me, I trust I may be able to make the present building
worthy of its past. It will be a delightful task for me; but I must
tell you frankly that it will cost a very large sum of money; how much
I shall be able to inform you when I have got out my plans and gone
into the estimate; but, at any rate, I can say emphatically that the
place is worth the expenditure. Am I to have _carte blanche_?"
"Yes," said Ida; "I will leave it entirely in your hands."
This at least she could do with the money which her father had so
mysteriously made: restore it, the house he had loved so well well, to
its old dignity and grandeur.
The great architect, very much impressed not only by the Hall but its
beautiful young mistress, left before Mr. Wordley, who wanted to talk
over business with Ida. But he found her rather absent-minded and
preoccupied and presently, in a pause, she said, with forced calmness: "Is Sir Stephen Orme still at the Villa at Brae Wood, Mr. Wordley?"
He had been making some memoranda in his pocket-book and he looked up
with a start and stared at her.
"Is Sir Stephen--My dear child, don't you know--haven't you heard?"
"Heard what?" she asked, her face beginning to grow paler, her lips set
tightly.
"God bless my soul, I'm surprised!" he exclaimed. "I thought everybody
had heard the news. Sir Stephen is not living at the Villa, for a very
grave and all-sufficient reason: he is dead, my dear."
Ida leant back in her chair and raised a screen which she held in her
hand so that it shielded her face from his gaze.
"I did not know," she said, in a very low voice. "I had not heard, I
have not seen any papers, or, if I have, only the advertisement part.
Dead!"