"By and by that may be useful," said the other; "but at present tell me, if you have no objection, what made you part so suddenly?"
Rose coloured a little: but she replied frankly, "We heard the voices of two people coming down the arbutus walk, as we call it--a path bounded by evergreens, which leads, with several turns, into the broad walk past the fish-pond."
"Were the persons speaking at any great distance?" inquired the barrister.
"In a direct line, I should think forty or fifty yards," she answered; "but by the arbutus walk more than a hundred, I dare say."
"Then were they speaking loud that you heard them so far?" asked her companion; "or only conversing quietly?"
"Oh, they were speaking very loud and angrily," replied the young lady, "Sir William Winslow especially."
"Then Sir William Winslow was one of the speakers," said the barrister.
Rose coloured a good deal, and was evidently agitated, but she answered, "He was, beyond all doubt. His voice is very peculiar. It was raised high; and I can have no doubt of it."
The lawyer played slowly with the eye-glass at his buttonhole, and looked her full in the face; for he saw that there were suspicions in her mind; but he answered deliberately and with some emphasis: "We will avoid that point, Miss Tracy, in the examination in chief, and, if possible, so frame our questions as to give the opposite counsel no opportunity of inquiring who was the speaker; but, nevertheless, you may be pressed upon the subject, and then of course the truth must be told, whatever be the result. Where is Sir William now?"
"He has gone to the Continent, I believe," said Rose, with some embarrassment.