“Indeed, Miss Aurea, I said just what you said, and that Miss Susan was too old; but they say there is no fool like an old one—and some folk will gossip. And there was Mrs. Lambert, who married a boy that was at school with her own son. You know there’s not much to talk of here—now the Ramsays are gone. As for the young man, as I told you to-night, I never held a good opinion of him; he’s too secret and too off-hand to please me. He goes out of a night for exercise, so he says, walking the country till daybreak; but that’s just a blind. Who is he with?—tell me that?”
Aurea remembered, with a sudden stinging pang, how she and her father had overtaken him one evening escorting Dilly Topham. Dilly had been crying, and she was holding his hand!
“Why, I saw him myself in the theatre at Brodfield,” resumed Norris, “and he had a young woman with him—so he had.”
“And why not?” bravely demanded Aurea, but her lips were white.
“The two were in a box, and he sat back—but I knew him—and afterwards they walked together to the Coach and Horses Hotel, the best in Brodfield. She was tall and slim, and wore a long coat and black lace scarf over her head—I call it very bold in the public street.”
“One of his friends,” explained Aurea, with a stoical indifference her heart belied; and to cut short any further disclosures, she released herself from her handmaiden’s clutches and knelt down to say her prayers.
By a disagreeable and curious coincidence, Miss Morven received that same evening ample confirmation of Norris’ arraignment!
Lady Kesters had decided to pay her brother another visit, and wrote to announce that, as she and Martin were within fifty miles, she would fly down to see him for a few hours.
“I’ll come to Brodfield by train and motor over. Don’t breathe a word to the Parretts. I can put up at the Drum and meet you there. I’ve ever so much to say and hear; your letters are miserable, and I’ve not seen you for more than two months. Martin is off to America in October—he has to look after some business—and I am going with him, as I want to see the country, but I shudder to think of the crossing. Uncle Dick is at Carlsbad. If you come over to the churchyard about six to-morrow, I shall be there. I’ll hire a car for the day and get back to Brodfield for the night, and rush to Rothes next morning with the milk; if you will make an appointment, I can meet you, and go for a stroll and a talk.”
A smart Napier and a motor-veiled lady were not now a startling novelty in Ottinge—it was the highway to many places; but the 40 h.p. motor and lady who put up at the Drum was a refreshing novelty—and a novelty invested in mystery.