"You did," said Piers.
His tone was deliberately repressive, and a little quiver of disappointment went through Avery. She became silent, and the magic of the woods closed softly in upon them. Evening was drawing on, and the long, golden rays of sunshine lay like a benediction over the quiet earth.
The silence between them grew and expanded into something of a barrier. From her seat on a fallen tree Avery gazed out before her. She could not see Piers' face which was bent above the stick which he had begun to whittle with his knife. He was sitting on the ground at her feet, and only his black head was visible to her.
Suddenly, almost fiercely, he spoke. "I know Edmund Crowther."
Avery's eyes came down to him in astonishment. "You know him!"
"Yes, I know him." He worked furiously at his stick without looking up. His words came in quick jerks, as if for some reason he wanted to get them spoken without delay. "I met him years ago. He did me a good turn—helped me out of a tight corner. A few weeks ago—when I was at Monte Carlo with my grandfather—I met him again. He told me then that he knew you. Of course it was a rum coincidence. Heaven only knows what makes these things happen. You needn't write to him, I will."
He ceased to speak, and suddenly Avery saw that his hands were trembling—trembling violently as the hands of a man with an ague. She watched them silently, wondering at his agitation, till Piers, becoming aware of her scrutiny, abruptly flung aside the stick upon which he had been expending so much care and leaped to his feet with a laugh that sounded oddly strained to her ears.
"Come along!" he said. "If we sit here talking like Darby and Joan much longer, we shall forget that it's actually our wedding-day."
Avery looked up at him without rising, a queer sense of foreboding at her heart. "Then Edmund Crowther is a friend of yours," she said. "A close friend?"
He stood above her, and she saw a very strange look in his eyes—almost a desperate look.