“Oh, Isabel, how can we talk of such trivial things? Yes, I was there; I was in the singing party, too. It makes me shudder to think that at that very minute, perhaps——” The girl paused for a moment, with parted lips and troubled face, as if pondering some sudden thought; then exclaimed, “Oh-h! the horse! Could it have been!”
“Could what have been!” Isabel stopped in her caged-panther-like pacing, and looked deep inquiry.
“But no, of course not! What connection could there have been! You see, after I left the wagon, to cut across by the path at the end of the poplars, a horse came galloping like the wind up the road, with some figure lying low on its back. We were too far away to see distinctly, though the night was so light”—she had insensibly drifted into the use of the plural pronoun—“but the thing went by so like a flash that it seemed an apparition. And come to think of it, there was an effort to avoid noise. I know I wondered at there being such a muffled sound, and Seth explained——”
She stopped short, conscious of having said more than she intended.
“Seth was with you, then?”
“Yes—he met me, quite unexpectedly, by the thorns. He had been out walking, he said; the night was too fine to sleep.”
“Yes, I heard him go out, an hour and a half at least before the singers came by. Did he say anything to you about what had happened, here in the house, during the evening?” Isabel’s azure eyes took on their darkest hue now, in the intentness of her gaze into her companion’s face.
“Only that he had had words with Albert—poor boy! how like a knife the memory of them must be to him now!”
“Did he tell you what the words were about?”
“No.”