He nodded. “And then you wandered up to the Stones.”
She felt herself colour. With an effort she answered him. “It wasn’t quite like that. I met—a friend, or rather—he found me here. We got lost in the fog. That was how it happened.”
“Yes,” said Arthur.
He turned the horse up the wild track to the left without further words, and they went on in silence at a walk.
A great stillness brooded about their path. A certain awe had taken possession of Frances. The ruggedness of the place, its austerity, held her like a spell. The high hills shut them in, and the music of many streams was the only sound.
“You are taking me to the Stones?” she said at length, and unconsciously her voice was sunk almost to a whisper.
“Yes,” he said.
They went on up the lonely track. She tried to picture her walk with Montague through the blinding fog. Here she had slipped into bog, there she had stumbled among stones. Then as now, the vague sounds of running water had filled the desolation as with eerie, chanting voices. The smell of bog-myrtle came to her suddenly, and in a moment very vividly the terror of that night was back upon her. The thud of the horse’s hoofs on the wet track fell with a fateful, remorseless beat. She experienced a swift, almost overwhelming desire to turn back.
It must have communicated itself to the man beside her, for he checked the animal with a curt word and brought the swaying cart to a standstill.
“Miss Thorold, what is it? Have I brought you too far?”