The lord of Wastelands walked with him to the gate, and bid him a cheery good-speed as he cantered away.
He was dipping out of sight, when a long man, with a rod over his shoulder, came past up the road, and leered sourly as he went by at the baronet.
“Come,” thought the gentleman, “I’ve seen you once before. What do you fish for in these dry beds, my friend?”
He waited until the man had vanished over the hill. The latter had looked back once on his way, and seeing himself observed, had gone forward with no further token of inquisitiveness.
Mr. Tuke returned to his house, in a pleasantly preoccupied frame of mind. He was both cheered and amused over the meeting with his lively neighbour, and promised himself a substantial dividend of fun out of that investment in the other’s friendship. He called to Whimple, as he passed, that he should need him no longer, and so went by to his front door, and, on the threshold, met Darda.
At once, some impulse of the moment drove him to look full in her face and to say: “What is the Lake of Wine?”
The girl backed from him, and stared a breathless instant with round eyes of wonder. Then she gave a small soft laugh, and, twining her fingers together, set her lips chilly like frosted rosebuds shrunk from opening to a north-easter.
“Darda,” he said, “will you not tell me? I think you don’t know what is the Lake of Wine, or where it is?”
“I know—I know!” she cried suddenly—“but what have you done that I should tell you?”—and, with a changeling screech, she sprang past him and vanished up the drive.