Towards five o'clock he took a resolution.
"There are such things as accidents, but there is also," he argued, "such a thing as design. Why is man endowed with free-will? I don't care how it may look, nor what they may think. I 'm going to call upon her, I 'm going to ask myself to tea."
In this, however, he reckoned without the keeper of her door.
"The ladies er ait, sir," announced that prim-lipped functionary.
"Now farewell hope," he mourned, as the door closed in his face. "There's nothing left for me to do but to go for a thundering long walk, and tire myself into oblivion. I will walk to Wetherleigh."
Head bent, eyes downcast, sternly resolved to banish her from his thought, he set forwards, with rapid, dogged steps. He had gone, it may be, a hundred yards, when a voice stopped him.
"Sh—sh! Please—please!" it whispered.
IX
The grounds immediately appertaining to Craford New Manor are traversed by a brook. Springing from amidst a thicket of creepers up the hillside, it comes tumbling and winding, a series of miniature cascades, over brown rocks, between mossy banks shadowed by ferns and eglantine, through the sun-shot dimness of a grove of pine-trees, to fling itself with a final leap and flash (such light-hearted self-immolation) into the ornamental pond at the bottom of the lawn. It is a pretty brook, and pleasing to the ear, with its purl and tinkle of crisp water.
And now, as Anthony, heading for the Wetherleigh-wards exit of the park, approached the brook, to cross it,—"Sh, sh—please, please,"—a whisper stopped him.