When, at last, long past the hour when the household at the Alders retired to rest, we dispersed to our rooms, I made a mistake in my corridor, and found myself in one which led to the servants’ wing; and I heard a man’s voice that I knew saying persuasively—
“Don’t be in such a hurry! She won’t be up for half an hour yet, nor my man either. I never get a word with you now.”
Suddenly it flashed upon me whose the voice was. It was the voice I had heard talking to Sarah in the plantation, the voice of Mr. Rayner’s mysterious friend. And the person he was talking to, and with whom he proceeded to exchange a kiss, was Lady Mills’s maid! It was a strange thing, but one about which I could no longer have a doubt. The respectful man-servant I had met before dinner in the corridor and the visitor who was shown into the study at the Alders as a gentleman, and who was yet on familiar terms with Tom Parkes and Sarah, were one and the same person!
I was very sleepy and very much preoccupied with this curious discovery when I got to my room; but, before I went to bed, I put, as I thought, my beautiful but unfortunate pendant safely inside my desk, resolved not to wear it again.
CHAPTER XVII.
I got up next morning directly I was called, and was downstairs long before anybody else—but I was glad of that, for I wanted to explore the garden. It was a beautiful, warm, bright morning, and I rejoiced, for it would bring the people to Geldham Church for the harvest-thanksgiving. I went over the lawn, and down the alleys, and round and round the flower-beds, and peeped into the greenhouses, and tried to see through the steaming glass of the hot-houses, which were locked, when, suddenly, turning round one of them, I came face to face with Tom Parkes in his Sunday clothes, with a key in one hand and a basket of eggs in the other. He was evidently disconcerted, and tried by turning to the door of the hot-house to avoid me. But I accosted him at once.
“Tom—Tom Parkes, don’t you know me—Miss Christie?” I said.
“Lor’, yes, miss, to be sure, so it is! Who’d ’a’ thought o’ seeing you here?” said he, touching his hat with rather awkward surprise.
“Why, you must have known me, Tom! You looked as if you had seen a ghost!”
“Well, the truth is, miss, asking your pardon,” said Tom sheepishly, “that I didn’t want you to see me. You see, I’ve been took on here as extry under-gardener and help, and the head-gardener he don’t like Londoners, and I don’t want him to know as I’m a London chap. So, if you would be ser good, miss, as not to mention as you’ve seen me before, I should take it kind.”