"Lady Olive," I said, earnestly, "I scarcely know how to thank you. I cannot tell you how much I feel your kindness. I shall take you at your word, and write you if ever I need any help, and if I do not I shall always like to think of your offer."
She smiled down at me beamingly.
"I am so glad you're not offended. Of course I shall see you again before you go, and I will bring you down a card with my address in London. Good-bye. No, au revoir."
She touched her horse with the whip and galloped away after the others, and the bright winter's day seemed to me less bright when she had gone. I watched her out of sight, and at the bend of the grassy road she turned round in her saddle and waved her whip. I returned her farewell with my hat, then, when she disappeared, I went back to my place amongst the men, and worked till the perspiration streamed down my face, and I was obliged to take off my coat and hang it on a branch of a fallen tree. But I felt all the better for it, for it has always seemed to me, as it did then, that hard physical labour is the most magnificent relaxation for an over-wrought mind. When the sun set and our day's work was over, I was stiff and my arms were sore, but my heart was lighter than it had been since this crisis had come. I stood filling my pipe and chatting to the foreman whilst one of the labourers had gone for my horse, until he, too, followed the others, and I was left alone.
At least I thought so, but I was mistaken. A voice, croaking and weak, almost at my shoulder, suddenly startled me, and I turned round to find an old woman, bent double, leaning on her stick, with her bead-like eyes fixed upon me.
"Who be'st you?" she said. "Be you him as they call the agent?"
I acknowledged that it was so, and that my name was Arbuthnot.
"It's a loi," she answered, deliberately. "Dost think that Sarah Milsham knaw'st not a Devereux when she seest one? Be'st thou Muster Herbert's son? God bless him."
I looked around anxiously, but there was not a soul in sight.
"Thou be'st a son o' my Mr. Herbert," she muttered. "I knaw'st thou be'st so like him that I thought thee was a ghost, boy. What be'st thou a doing here? Wheres't thy father?"