Ella, he still watched with the same care and secrecy, and sometimes he seemed to see her walking amidst the flowers as an angel of sweetness and laughing innocence; and sometimes he saw her, as it were, with the shadow of death around her beauty, and behind her gentle eyes and winning ways a great and horrible abyss.
Of one thing he was certain—her mind was troubled and she was not at ease; and it was plain, also, that she feared her smiling soft-spoken stepfather.
As the days passed, too, Dunn grew convinced that she was watching him all the time, even when she seemed most indifferent, as closely and as intently as he watched her.
“All watching together,” Dunn thought grimly. “It would be simple enough, I suppose, if one could hit on the key move, but that I suppose no one knows but Deede Dawson himself. One thing, he can't very well be up to any fresh mischief while he's lounging about here like this. I suppose he is simply waiting his time.”
As for the chess problem, that baffled him entirely. He said as much to Deede Dawson, who was very pleased, but would not tell him what the solution was.
“No, no, find it out for yourself,” he said, chuckling with a merriment in which, for once his cold eyes seemed to take full share.
“I'll go on trying,” said Dunn, and it grew to be quite a custom between them for Deede Dawson to ask him how he was getting on with the problem; and for Dunn to reply that he was still searching for the key move.
Several times little errands took Dunn into the village, where, discreetly listening to the current gossip, he learned that Mr. John Clive of Ramsdon Place had been injured in an attack made upon him by a gang of ferocious poachers—at least a dozen in number—but was making good progress towards recovery.
Also, he found that Mr. John Clive's visits to Bittermeads had not gone unremarked, or wholly uncriticized, since there was a vague feeling that a Mr. Clive of Ramsdon Place ought to make a better match.
“But a pretty face is all a young man thinks of,” said the more experienced; and on the whole, it seemed to be felt that the open attention Clive paid to Ella was at least easily to be understood.