"Oh," she said; "you are a tourist—you are fishing?"
Stafford could not bring himself to say that he was the son of the man who had built the great white house, which, no doubt, her father and she resented.
"You have a very beautiful place here," he said, after a pause.
She turned and looked at the house in the dim light, with a touch of pride in her dreamy eyes.
"Yes," she said, as if it were useless to deny the fact.
"It is very old, and I am very fond—"
She stopped suddenly, her lips apart, her eyes fixed on the farther end of the terrace; for while she had been speaking a figure, only just perceptible in the semi-darkness, had moved slowly across the end of the terrace, paused for a moment at the head of the flight of steps, and then slowly descended.
Stafford also saw it, and glancing at her he saw that she was startled, if not frightened. She scarcely seemed to breathe, and she turned her large, dark eyes upon him questioningly, somewhat appealingly.
"What is that?" she said, in a whisper, more to herself than to him.
"Someone—a man has gone down the steps from the house," he said.
"Don't you know who it is?"