Phoebe reluctantly admitted that Ellen had.
“Well, you need not wait for her to return; but come back as quickly as you can, in case I should want anybody.”
“Directly, miss,” said Phoebe, vanishing.
Lydia, left alone, resumed her work leisurely, occasionally pausing to gaze at the distant woodland, and note with transient curiosity a flock of sheep on the slope, or a flight of birds above the tree-tops. Something more startling occurred presently. A man, apparently half-naked, and carrying a black object under his arm, darted through a remote glade with the swiftness of a stag, and disappeared. Lydia concluded that he had been disturbed while bathing in the canal, and had taken flight with his wardrobe under his arm. She laughed at the idea, turned to her manuscript again, and wrote on. Suddenly there was a rustle and a swift footstep without. Then the latch was violently jerked up, and Cashel Byron rushed in as far as the threshold, where he stood, stupefied at the presence of Lydia, and the change in the appearance of the room.
He was himself remarkably changed. He was dressed in a pea-jacket, which evidently did not belong to him, for it hardly reached his middle, and the sleeves were so short that his forearms were half bare, showing that he wore nothing beneath this borrowed garment. Below it he had on white knee-breeches, with green stains of bruised grass on them. The breeches were made with a broad ilap in front, under which, and passing round his waist, was a scarf of crimson silk. From his knees to his socks, the edges of which had fallen over his laced boots, his legs were visible, naked, and muscular. On his face was a mask of sweat, dust, and blood, partly rubbed away in places by a sponge, the borders of its passage marked by black streaks. Underneath his left eye was a mound of bluish flesh nearly as large as a walnut. The jaw below it, and the opposite cheek, were severely bruised, and his lip was cut through at one corner. He had no hat; his close-cropped hair was disordered, and his ears were as though they had been rubbed with coarse sand-paper.
Lydia looked at him for some seconds, and he at her, speechless. Then she tried to speak, failed, and sunk into her chair.
“I didn’t know there was any one here,” he said, in a hoarse, panting whisper. “The police are after me. I have fought for an hour, and run over a mile, and I’m dead beat—I can go no farther. Let me hide in the back room, and tell them you haven’t seen any one, will you?”
“What have you done?” she said, conquering her weakness with an effort, and standing up.
“Nothing,” he replied, groaning occasionally as he recovered breath. “Business, that’s all.”
“Why are the police pursuing you? Why are you in such a dreadful condition?”