On the anniversary of the fifth earl's death, when the wind at dusk was cooing round Cherrington Cottage like a mighty dove, Dorothy was seized with a sudden restlessness and a desire to encounter the mysterious and uneasy air of this gusty twilight of late summer. Her son was fast asleep, with both his grandmother and his aunt Arabella ready to minister to his most incomprehensible baby wish and serve him, were it possible, with the paradisal milk of which he dreamed. He had been restless all day, and now that he was sleeping so calmly Dorothy felt that she could allow herself to take air and exercise. Owing to the continued emptiness of the Court, she had grown into the habit of walking about the park whenever she felt inclined, and except for the solemnity and silence of the house itself she was hardly conscious that she was no longer the mistress of Clare, because the lodge-keepers and various servants of the estate were familiar to her and always showed how glad they were to see her among them.
The park that evening was haunted by strange noises; but Dorothy's mind never ran on the supernatural, and neither swooping owl, nor flitting bat, nor weasel swiftly jigging across her path, nor sudden scurry of deer startled at their drinking-pool alarmed her. She walked on until the dusk had deepened to a wind-blown starlight, and she found herself in the gardens, where on the curved seat of the pergola she sat until the moon rose and the statues shivered like ghosts in a light changing from silver to gray, from gray to silver, as the scud traveled over the moon's face. But Dorothy had no eyes that night for shadows. She was keeping the anniversary of the fifth earl's death by concentrating upon one supreme problem—the restoration of all these moonlit acres, of all these surging yews and cedars, of every stone and statue, to the rightful heir. If any ghost had walked in Clare that night she would have thought of nothing but the best way to retain him for her son's service. Each extravagant idea that came into her head seemed to stay there but for an instant before it was caught by the wind and blown out of reach forever. Restlessly she left the pergola and wandered round the empty house where the wind in the pines on either side was like a sea and the scent of the magnolias in bloom against the walls swirled upon the air with an extraordinary sweetness. She entered one of the groves and passed through to the lawn behind, where a wild notion came into her head, inspired by the wild night and this mad close of summer, to find an ax and deface the escutcheon of Clare, to mutilate the angelic supporters, to eclipse forever that stone moon in her complement, and so spoil for the intruding owner at least one of his trophies. The unheraldic moon was not yet above the pine-trees on the eastern side of the house, and such was the force of the wind blowing straight off the sea from the northwest—blowing here with redoubled force on account of the gap in the cliffs through which it had to travel—that when a cloud passed over the still invisible moon on the far side, Dorothy had the impression that the luminary was being blown out like a lamp, so dark did it then become here in the shadow of the house. She had an impulse to defy this wind, to walk down to the headland's edge and watch the waves leaping like angry, foaming dogs against the face of the cliff; but half-way to the sea she had to turn round, exhausted, and surrender to the will of the wind. Her hair blown all about her shoulders, spindrift and spume racing at her side, she let herself sail back along the lea toward the house, looking to any one who should see her like a mermaid cast up by the tempest upon a haunted island. Haunted it was, indeed, for just as the moon shining down a gorge of clouds rose above the pines she met the Caliban of this island.
"You!" she cried. "I knew it was you the whole time."
Houston was unable to speak for a minute, so frightened had he been by this apparition from the sea, so frightened was he to be wandering round this stolen house and in his wanderings to have provoked this spirit of the place, and in the end more frightened than ever, perhaps, to find who the spirit really was. Dorothy did not realize how strange she looked, how magical and debonair, how perilous, how wild; she whose brain was throbbing with one thought perceived in Houston's expression only the shame he should naturally feel for having robbed her son.
"You look tremendously blown about," he managed to say, finally. "Won't you come inside for a minute?"
Then suddenly as if the wind had got into his brain he said to her, "Dorothy, why don't you marry me and take all this back for yourself?"
"Could I?"
She had appealed to herself, not to him; but he, misunderstanding her question, began like a true Oriental to praise the gifts he would offer her.
"Stop," she commanded. "All these things that you want to give to me, will you give them to my son? Don't be so bewildered. You knew I had a son? I can't stop here to argue about myself and what I can give you or you can give me. If you will make over Clare as it stands with all its land—oh yes, and buy back the Hopley estate which Tony's father sold—to my son, I'll marry you."
"If you'll marry me I'll do anything," he vowed.