“Won’t you find out who it is?” whispered the girl again.
Rudolph hesitated.
“Perhaps I know,” said he shortly. “But if you wish, of course I can make sure.”
Then, with evident reluctance, and taking no pains to go noiselessly, he followed the intruder through the bushes, and was in time to catch a glimpse of him as he disappeared over a part of the fence that was in a broken-down condition. Rudolph did not attempt to continue his pursuit, but contented himself with waiting until he heard the side gate in the garden wall of “Stone House” swing back into its place with a loud creaking noise. Then he went back to Mabin. She was standing where he had left her, on the broad gravel path under the faded laburnum. The shadows were very deep under the trees by this time, and in the half-light her young face, with its small, delicate features, its dreamy, thoughtful eyes, full of the wonder at the world of the very young, looked so pretty that for the moment Rudolph forgot the errand on which he had been sent, and approached her with no thought of anything but the beauty and the sweetness of her face.
She, all unconscious of this, woke him into recollection with one abrupt word: “Well?”
“Oh!” almost stammered he, “it was as I thought, the same person that I saw watching before.”
“And he went into our garden. I heard the gate,” said Mabin with excitement. “It must be this Mr. Banks. Oh, who do you think he is? What do you think he has come for?”
Rudolph was silent. Even to the least curious mind the circumstances surrounding both him and Mrs. Dale could not seem other than mysterious. If he were a detective, and he certainly did not look like one, surely he would not go to work in this extravagant manner, by renting a large and expensive house merely for the purpose of watching his next-door neighbor. Neither, it might be supposed, would he set to work in such a clumsy fashion as to be caught making his investigations at the very outset. Rudolph felt that the whole affair was a mystery to which he could not pretend to have the shadow of a clew. He confessed this to Mabin.
“I wish,” he went on, in a gentle tone, “that I had known something of this before your father went away.”
“Why?” asked Mabin in surprise, and with something like revolt in her tone.