“Yes, I’d noticed that,” he began, and then their attention was snatched back to their strange visitor by the sound of a laugh. It was a clear, high laugh, but just too near the edge of emotion for a person under suspicion of madness.
“I must see to this,” Harrison murmured to his wife, and took a few steps towards Lady Ulrica and the mysterious visitor. He was a connoisseur of feminine beauty, and he had been struck by what he mentally termed the “exquisite accuracy” of the profile presented to him. It had come clear and sharp against the background of the plantation, white and vivid in the moonlight; a forehead in a vertical line over the delicately rounded chin, a perfectly curved aquiline nose and the suggestion of a fine, sensitive mouth. Harrison saw it as the considered and patient modelling of some idealised profile in a cameo. It was a type that he very greatly admired; and this sight of her beauty perhaps softened the asperity of the cross-examination he had intended.
He came within a few feet of her as he began to speak, but she was still within the black shadow of the trees and he could no longer distinguish her features.
“We—we are rather at a loss, my dear young lady,” he said. “You understand, I hope, that if you find yourself in any perplexity, my wife will be delighted to offer you our hospitality.”
Instead of answering him she put out her hand towards Lady Ulrica, but when that lady made a responsive movement, the stranger shrank away again.
“They don’t help me,” she murmured. An undercurrent of agitation was coming into her speech, and began to dominate it as she continued, more hurriedly; “I can’t help it, if they won’t believe me. They’re antag—antago—tell them to be still—in their thoughts—in their....”
Her voice died out, fluttering down through the original quality of huskiness that had first distinguished it, to a hoarse, diminishing whisper. And it seemed at the same moment as if she also were stealthily retreating, sliding away from them.
“Look out! She’s going!” Harrison cried out. “We mustn’t let her get away like this. She’s—she’s not safe to be left alone. We must catch her.”
But already the stranger was nearly out of sight. For an instant they saw her through the darkness, as an illusive pillar of faint light gleaming among the profound shadows of the yews; a pale uncertain form that vanished even as they started in pursuit.
“I’m going to get to the bottom of this,” Harrison announced with determination as he led the search.