"I don't know; I can't describe him, for the face was contorted by the glass. But it was all an absurd mistake of mine, and there wasn't anything there really, but just the ivy."
"I wonder." Rada's voice shook. "This is a lonely place." She glanced at a little gold watch which she wore. "It is nearly ten o'clock," she went on nervously, "and we have been sitting here talking without making up our minds what we are going to do."
"Let me go to the inn," Mostyn said; then he glanced doubtfully at the girl, "though I don't think it's right that you should stay in a lonely house like this all by yourself," he added.
"I've done so many times before." The girl spoke with some defiance; then her eyes turned nervously in the direction of the window, before which Mostyn was vainly struggling to fix the shutters. "But I don't know that I care to to-night," she added, the look of challenge fading from her eyes with one of those rapid changes peculiar to her. "I—I think I'm frightened."
Indeed she looked frightened, more frightened, perhaps, than the occasion demanded, and it was quite useless for Mostyn to try and argue that what he had seen was in reality nothing more than a cluster of ivy.
"You must walk with me to the Willis's cottage," she said. "We know that they have returned, and I shall be quite safe there." Her eyes were timorous, and she trembled as she stood by his side. It was as though she was conscious of some personal danger, of a threat, a menace, to herself. All Mostyn's anger faded away.
And so it was arranged. Rada was restless and nervous, unable to talk on any topic whatever, quite incapable of listening to the explanation which Mostyn had desired to make as to his taking up racing. He would have liked to have told her, too, about Castor, and the offer which had been made to him by Captain Armitage. It seemed only fair to do so, for he had an idea that she might not approve of the captain's decision to sell his horse. Not that Mostyn would allow this to affect him, so he told himself. He had been challenged by Rada to a sort of contest, a challenge repeated that day, and he could use any tactics he chose, as long as they were straight and above-board.
But she gave him no opportunity to speak. She hurried him down the broad drive, a road which was as yet strange to him, and which, like the one that he had already traversed, skirted the lawn and then plunged into the wood, leading direct to the Willis's cottage, which was on the further boundary of the estate.
As they stepped rapidly among the trees, she kept turning her head to the right and the left. "What's that?" she would say, and then, gripping his arm with real alarm, "I'm sure I heard footsteps following us; there's someone hiding in the wood!"
Perhaps Mostyn caught the infection of her nervousness; at any rate, there were moments when he, too, heard, or imagined he heard, the sound of the cracking of dry wood, as if the twigs were being broken under a heavy heel. Once he halted and cried out, "Who's there?" but there was no reply, and he comforted his trembling little companion with the assurance that they were both in safety.