Merrivall remained silent for a moment, standing still upon the mossy pathway. “Nobody would know if we got married at once at a registry office,” he said at length. “We could go abroad for some months.”
She looked up at him archly. “A wife is a very expensive thing you know,” she smiled. “Why, a woman’s clothes alone cost a fortune. You see it isn’t only what shows on the outside—it’s all the wonderful things underneath....”
They passed on out of earshot, leaving Jim, who remembered so well her tricks, consumed by fierce anger, and overwhelmed by his destiny. If Dolly married this man, the final complication would be reached, and the legal difficulties would be multiplied out of all reckoning. Moreover, the thought that the home of the Tundering-Wests should pass to a washed-out drunken remittance man enhanced the value of the estate a hundredfold in his eyes. He felt inclined to reveal himself at once: he was mad with rage at her misrepresentation of the facts of their relationship.
A few moments later Merrivall stopped short, looking at his watch; and, as he turned, Jim could hear again his words. “Good gracious!” he exclaimed. “I shall be late for the whist drive. What am I thinking of!”
He took Dolly’s hand and ran back at a jog-trot towards the gate. As soon as they had passed him and were hidden by the bend in the path, Jim rose to his feet and hurried after them. He had no settled purpose: he wished only to follow them. When he came within fifty yards of the border of the woods, however, he paused behind a tree, and watched Merrivall as he hastened across the garden, leaving Dolly panting at the gate. She was perhaps a little annoyed at his precipitation, and thought it more dignified to let him be, now that she was back in the safety of her garden and the fearsome woods were behind her.
After a lapse of a minute or two Jim observed that she was looking from side to side as though she had lost something, and soon he could see that she had dropped one of her gloves, and was trying to pluck up her courage to enter the gloomy dimness of the haunted woods once more in order to find it. His eye searched the pathway, and presently he discerned the missing glove lying not more than a few yards from him, a little further into the woods.
He had no time to conceal himself before Dolly came running down the pathway, looking furtively to right and left. She passed without seeing him and retrieved the glove; but as she turned to retrace her steps she caught sight of him and started back, uttering a cry of fright.
Flight seemed useless to Jim: the crisis had come, and in his bitter wrath he gladly faced it. Slowly and deliberately he stepped forward on to the pathway and stood there barring her way. His raincoat and hat were still amongst the bracken at his former place of hiding, and now he stood silently in the grey and ghostly haze, wearing an old suit of clothes which she knew well, his dark hair falling untidily about his forehead, his face ashen white, his eyes burning with anger, his whole attitude menacing and vindictive.
Dolly’s terror was horrible to behold. Her right hand and arm beat at the air conclusively; the knuckles of her left hand were thrust between her chattering teeth; her eyes were dilated, and her eyebrows seemed to have gone up into her hair.
“I didn’t mean it, Jim!” she gasped. “I didn’t mean it! Go away! I’ll tell him the truth; I’ll tell him you were good to me ... O God, take him away!... Go back to your grave, Jim. O God, take him away, take him away ...!”