"A woman? Perhaps she is one of the women employed on the farm."
"I don't know," said Piers, "I wish you would come and see who it is."
"Very well, dear," Joyce said; "you are sure it is a woman?"
"Yes, and she is crying and sobbing."
Joyce followed Piers along the shrubbery path, now covered with a new layer of fallen leaves, and, at the turn of a still narrower side path, she saw, half hidden by the brambles and undergrowth, a woman; her head, bowed upon her hands, and her attitude one of despair.
Joyce went near and said: "What is the matter? Are you in pain? Can I help you?"
The woman raised her head, and Joyce recognised at once that she was Susan Priday.
Thoughts of the night on Mendip; of the fierce onslaught made on Gilbert Arundel by the big giant, and the almost certainty she felt, that the cruel blow aimed at her father was by the same hand, made Joyce start back and say, coldly:
"You had better not stay here, these are private grounds."
Piers, who was leaning against the bole of a beech tree, said: