“I’ll take it up to the Grange myself,” he said, “and I’ll give it to nobody but Olivia herself, or the girl Bessie. Perhaps she’ll see me—confound her, she was well enough to go to the prison! Well enough for that! But not well enough to see her husband! Wait, oh, only wait!” and he half-stopped and shook his fist in the air.
He was so absorbed in his reflections that he entered the Grange avenue without noticing it, and, suddenly looking up, he found himself by the rail over which he had leaped when he went to meet Bella-Bella. He stopped for a moment, and glared fearfully toward the shadows of the wood, then, with a shudder and a shake, as if a chill had fallen on him, hurried on.
The squire was out, the butler said, and Miss Olivia—he begged pardon, Mrs. Bradstone—was lying down, and not well enough to see any one. Would he come in and wait for the squire?
Bartley Bradstone shook his head, and turned aside that the man might not see the evil look that crossed his face. At that moment Bessie crossed the hall, and he called her.
“Here!” he said. “Just give this to Mrs. Bradstone, and tell her that I am so glad to hear she was able to go out to-day.”
In taking out the letter, he also pulled out Faradeane’s, which he thrust back again hurriedly into his breast-pocket. Then he went down the steps. At the bottom he paused and looked round, thinking he would go home by a road that avoided the awful spot; but he set his hat firmly on his head, and clinched his teeth, muttering:
“No, no; no use giving way like that! I shall have to pass the cursed place half-a-dozen times a day in the future.”
He walked down the avenue, but, though he had nerved himself to the utmost, as he approached the particular railing his heart began to thud and his cheeks to whiten. And suddenly, as he neared in the direction of the glade, his heart seemed to stop beating and his brain to whirl, for there, there on the very spot, was something, something in the shape and hue of a woman’s dress coming toward him. Was it a living woman or——
With a low cry of horror he staggered, and clutched at the railing with both hands to keep himself from falling, for his knees bent under him, still staring at the dimly-seen figure.
A second or two, that seemed like years, passed in that awful suspense; then the figure—living or dead—disappeared among the trees.