He was beside her in a second, looking over her outstretched arm that pointed toward the thickest portion of the grounds.
"What is it?" he asked.
"I don't know," she whispered. "Someone must have been here, and ran in there!"
He dashed after whatever it was, plunging through the shrubbery and threshing about for several minutes. Once she thought she heard a low cry, or voice, and for awhile he was so quiet that she grew more uneasy; but again the crackling sounds proclaimed him to be on the search, and finally he emerged.
"It's nothing," he said, coming up. "Maybe a dog."
"It couldn't have been a dog. Let's go to the house—it makes me creepy!"
They turned, crossing the little patches of moonlight filtered through the trees upon the violet sprinkled ground. It was a wonderfully seductive spot on a night like this! The mellow tinkle of the piano, arising from Ann's nimble touch, floated out to them;—they might have been walking in an enchanted fairy-land but for the turmoil about his heart and the unrest in her own. Impulsively she faced him:
"What do you think that could have been?"
He was taken unawares, and had of course no suspicion of her cause for nervousness.
"Brent," she said again, "I must know who was there!"