Who was she who had come out of the past to kiss his eyes and to tell him that she loved him? Why should such dreams come to him? He had never dreamed in all his life before, but she had been so real, even to the little black lace mittens, black lace mittens such he had never seen on a girl's hands before. Yet he had dreamed of her and the sweet voice of her and the sweet Sussex speech and strangely enough, had he not answered her in that same speech? He remembered it now with a sudden start of surprise.
Yes, he with Eton and Oxford behind him, had spoken as she had spoken, as the old man who had told him about the broken Cross in Little Stretton had spoken.
He turned away, he made his way back through the garden. He wondered at his seeming previous knowledge of it now, for that knowledge was gone, it took him some time to find the gap where the broken wicket gate had been, but he found it and went, blundering and uncertain, across the grass grown stable yard.
He locked the battered green door behind him and thrust the great key into his coat pocket and went along the road, and on the way to the village he passed a little thatched roofed cottage and under that thatched roof a maid was lying on her little bed, face downward, weeping her heart out for the thing that he had done, yet he could not know that. How could he? He saw an old dame standing by the little gate, an upright severe old dame, with white hair and a wrinkled face, and she bobbed him a country curtsey.
To her Allan lifted his hat politely.
"A beautiful day!" he said.
"And that it be, a wunnerful fine day and hot like for May her be, sir and might—might I make bold——" she hesitated.
Allan stopped and looked at her with kindly eyes.
"You were going to ask me something?"
"Cur-us I be, which be a besetting sin!" she admitted. "But Mr. Dalabey he hev passed by just now when my maid and I—my granddarter her be, were here and he told we as he hev sold the old Manor House and I were thinking, sir, seeing the key was sticking out, of your pocket——"