The Yellow Snake by Edgar Wallace

Joan Bray had a large attic which had come to be the most comfortable room in the house. It was not intended to be such when this retreat was given to her; but Joan was popular with the servants at Sunni Lodge, and in some mysterious way odd and cosy pieces of furniture had found their way to the room under the roof with its big windows and outlook. It had a special value to her now, for from this vantage she could see the square chimney of the Slaters' Cottage, and this gave her an indefinable sense of communion with the strange man who had come over her horizon.

The girls were out when she arrived, and she went up to her attic apartment, locked the door and sat down on the ancient sofa and, with her head between her hands, tried to straighten out the confusion in her mind. That Clifford Lynne had been no salaried servant of her relative, she had suspected from the first. He was a rich man, richer even than Joe Bray--what effect would that have had upon Stephen Narth's attitude had he known from the first? Suppose, instead of the apparition with the wild beard and the untidy clothes, there had appeared at Sunni Lodge that fateful afternoon this good-looking, well-dressed man, not in his role of manager, but as co-partner of Joe Bray? She had no doubt at all as to what would have been the result.