"Do you know her real name?"
"No! It is not my affair. My solicitors knew, and they were satisfied. Perhaps I ought not to have told you this, but—"
"Hush!" she said. "They are coming out. If you like you can take me down to the orchard wall, and we will watch the tide come in—"
Mannering came out alone and looked around. The full moon was creeping into the sky. The breath of wind which shook the leaves of the tall elm trees that shut in his little demesne from the village, was soft, and, for the time of year, wonderfully mild. Below, through the orchard trees, were faint visions of the marshland, riven with creeks of silvery sea. He turned back towards the room, where red-shaded lamps still stood upon the white tablecloth, a curiously artificial daub of color after the splendour of the moonlit land.
"The night is perfect," he exclaimed. "Do you need a wrap, or are you sufficiently acclimatized?"
She came out to him, tall and slender in her black dinner gown, the figure of a girl, the pale, passionate face of a woman, to whom every moment of life had its own special and individual meaning. Her eyes were strangely bright. There was a tenseness about her manner, a restraint in her tone, which seemed to speak of some emotional crisis. She passed out into the quiet garden, in itself so exquisitely in accordance with this sleeping land, and even Mannering was at once conscious of some alien note in these old-world surroundings which had long ago soothed his ruffled nerves into the luxury of repose.
"A wrap!" she murmured. "How absurd! Come and let us sit under the cedar tree. Those young people seem to have wandered off, and I want to talk to you."
"I am content to listen," he answered. "It is a night for listeners, this!"
"I want to talk," she continued, "and yet—the words seem difficult. These wonderful days! How quickly they seem to have passed."
"There are others to follow," he answered, smiling. "That is one of the joys of life here. One can count on things!"