“I do want to see him most particularly,” said Miss Stanbridge. “My business is immediate. Can you tell me, my good woman, how I can get to Broxbridge Hall? You know the neighbourhood, I dare say.”
“I do, indeed,” was the ready response.
“And can tell me what to do?”
“Well, marm, my zon and oi be goin’ that way, and we can show ’ee if a doan’t moind goin’ by a rough road through the woods.”
“How far is it?”
“Oh, only a little bit of a step.”
“Very well; then I will go, and trust to you to guide me,” said Miss Stanbridge. “I do not see any other course left open.”
Having paid the man for the distance he had brought her, she prepared to accompany them.
The woman climbed the bank at the side of the road and passed through an open gate into the footpath which led across a field.
The person whom the woman had mentioned as her son followed behind. Laura Stanbridge turned round in the field to look at him, but the night was so dark that she could only make out a shadowy form, which appeared to be enveloped in a large cloak with a high collar, which completely hid his features. Neither his dress, nor his gait were those of a labouring man, and she began to think that she had acted imprudently in trusting herself so implicitly to two strangers.