“Matter of three weeks, sir, and when we've got the timber out you'll be well advised to burn it. It's not worth a snap of the fingers.—Begging your pardon, sir,” the man went on, “the old lady in the distance there hangs about the whole of the time. Some of my men are half scared of her.”
Dominey swung around. On a mound a little distance away in the park, Rachael Unthank was standing. In her rusty black clothes, unrelieved by any trace of colour, her white cheeks and strange eyes, even in the morning light she was a repellent figure. Dominey strolled across to her.
“You see, Mrs. Unthank,” he began—
She interrupted him. Her skinny hand was stretched out towards the wood.
“What are those men doing, Sir Everard Dominey?” she demanded. “What is your will with the wood?”
“I am carrying out a determination I came to in the winter,” Dominey replied. “Those men are going to cut and hew their way from one end of the Black Wood to the other, until not a tree or a bush remains upright. As they cut, they burn. Afterwards, I shall have it drained. We may live to see a field of corn there, Mrs. Unthank.”
“You will dare to do this?” she asked hoarsely.
“Will you dare to tell me why I should not, Mrs. Unthank?”
She relapsed into silence, and Dominey passed on. But that night, as Rosamund and he were lingering over their dessert, enjoying the strange quiet and the wonderful breeze which crept in at the open window, Parkins announced a visitor.
“Mrs. Unthank is in the library, sir,” he announced. “She would be glad if you could spare her five minutes.”