He can see them from beneath her petticoats. They are not like mice, by any means, but they are of the proportions usually assigned to those who have many grandfathers, and they are very delicately clad.
If he had not recognised her at all at first, she had barely recognised him. That was because of the surprise—the shock, perhaps. She had almost come to believe in the possibility of living here always and alone, never seeing anyone except kind Mrs. Moriarty and Nero, the dog.
She has turned as white as death; and Wyndham, looking at her, tells himself it is the memory of that last dreadful night, when she had accepted death as her portion, rather than the life that lies behind her, that has blanched her cheeks and brought that terror into her eyes.
But in a minute all these theories of the clever barrister are distilled and float into air.
Having seen him, and dwelt upon his face, the colour in her own face has crept back, and with a sharp sigh of relief she draws nearer to him slowly, the dog, who has gone back to her, following, his muzzle in her hand.
‘I—I thought you were a stranger,’ says she faintly.
It is an odd sentence. A stranger! What else is he to her? Her manner, however, makes it clear to him that she has lived, since her entrance into the Cottage, in constant dread of being discovered by someone, and of being dragged back to a former existence—to which death, as she had proved to him that night, seems far preferable.
This accounts for the locked gates, and the girl’s admiration for the walls—an admiration that no doubt has but little to do with the ivy and the Virginian creeper, now throwing out its palest leaves of green, and the other trailing glories that have lifted them into a dream of beauty.
‘Your thought was very nearly right,’ says Wyndham, with a cold smile; he is quite unmoved by the nervous pallor and the frightened expression on the young face before him. Barristers after a while get accustomed to young, frightened faces, and lose their interest in them. ‘But, no doubt, you remember me?’
He pauses, and the girl looks at him for a moment.