He turned to the table to get the handkerchief. Once burned, he told himself, he would forget it—and so, too, would the boy. But apparently the boy had not forgotten it, even for a few minutes. When Darkham looked for the handkerchief it was gone. The idiot had come back for his relic.
Darkham stood and thought for a moment. No, there was no danger; and it might only excite that fool the more to compel him to restore it.
Still, he felt disturbed. He went to the window. The evening was divinely fair. It would rest him and arrange his thoughts to go for a stroll. He would walk down toward Rickton Villa—not to it, exactly. Her aunt was away this evening at the Monteiths'; but Agatha was sometimes in her garden at this hour, tending her flowers. There, or through the windows, he might, perhaps, get a glimpse of her.
CHAPTER XXII
The evening was now merging into night. Far up above in the darkening sky a pale star or two were shining. Night falls early in September, and already the flowers in the small garden at the villa were shutting up their pretty eyes.
It was a charming evening, soft, cool, melodious. The purling of the brook below was delightful in itself, but other music blended with it. The wind sighed so sweetly that the grasses in the meadows beyond bowed to it, in compliment, no doubt, and thus made a music of their own.
A clock somewhere struck the hour.
Agatha started to her feet. The tiny summer-house was so small that her charming head almost touched its roof as she rose.
"Who could have thought it was so late?" said she. "Eight o'clock! You must go!"
The surprise in her tone was surely complimentary; but Dillwyn looked aggrieved.