“But I’ll tell him you’ve been looking after him, Miss Jenny; and he’ll be ready to jump out of his boots for joy.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Johnson,” said Jane, archly. “Just as if there was anything between us!”
“Of course there isn’t—nothing at all,” laughed the gardener. “There’s nothing at all between you, and you’ll come together before long. He’s always talking about you, and comparing you to the best flowers we have under glass. But I’ll tell him you’ve been asking.”
“No, please don’t do anything of the kind,” said Jane; and she tripped away, trying to appear quite at her ease. But the poor girl’s heart was very sore, and though she tried hard, she had no further opportunity during the day of seeking McCray.
It was with a horrible fear, then, upon her that night, that as soon as she could get away from Lady Gernon’s room she hurried to her own, softly opened the window, and looked out upon the darkness. For it was an intensely dark night: the moon would not rise for some hours, and, to make it more obscure, there was a heavy bank of clouds to blot out the stars.
Jane listened eagerly, but the soft sighing of the wind through the trees was all she could hear. There was not the faintest rustle beneath her window, and she leaned out as far as she dared, feeling that her only course now was to listen for his coming, and then to whisper him to hurry round to the lobby, where there would be no fear of his being watched, while she spoke to him for a few minutes. That is, if he were watched at all, for a great deal of her alarm might, after all, be due to her own imagination.
Two hours of blank expectation passed, and not a sound had she heard. The stillness was at times even oppressive, and a shuddering feeling of fear again and again made her inclined to close the window, and try to drive away with sleep the troubles that paled her face. Twice over she had ventured to whisper softly his name—the name of the scoundrel whom she was watching there to protect—but there was no answer; and yet she knew that he would come—something seemed even to warn her that he was at hand; so that, when at last she did hear a faint rustling amidst the twigs, and the hard breathing as of some animal, she was in no way startled, but, whispering softly:
“Round by the lobby,” she said—“round by the lobby, quick!”
“All right,” was the whispered answer; and then, as Jane listened, there came again the rustling, when, with her heart wildly beating, she glided from the room, to stand outside, listening upon the landing.