Harrison was about to speak again when Greatorex cut in. “I say,” he said, in a voice that held a just perceptible note of excitement, “is that one of your maids down there by the lake? Girl in white; moving about by the yews?”
“What do you mean?” Mrs. Harrison replied, speaking with a little flurry of haste. “It must be after eleven, and the maids are in bed long ago, I hope.”
“Someone down there, anyway,” Greatorex asserted.
“Hm, hm! G.’s quite right, my dear,” Harrison said. “I—I think we ought to investigate this in the cause of common morality.”
“Charles? It may be one of the village girls,” his wife suggested.
“In which case she has no business in our paddock at midnight,” Harrison replied, and as he spoke he began to walk with an air of mechanical determination towards the steps in the sunk fence that led to the meadow.
“Shall we all go?” Greatorex asked, but Mrs. Harrison manifestly hesitated.
“I don’t know. Do you think, perhaps....” she began.
Greatorex, however, had not waited for her permission, and in half a dozen strides he too had reached the meadow. Vernon, Lady Ulrica and Mrs. Greatorex followed him with an effect of yielding to a sudden impulse, and Emma found herself alone on the lawn with Robert Fell.
“Well, if they’re all going,” she said with a little hysterical laugh, “I suppose we may as well go, too.”