“Hasty?” I asked.
“I'm afraid so.”
“He may, then, decline to receive me?”
“It is quite possible.”
The adventure began to assume a more and more formidable aspect. I agreed that great circumspection was required.
At last we alighted at a little way-side station in the heart of the country. We were the only travellers who descended, and when we had come out into a quiet road, and watched the train grow smaller and smaller, and rumble more and more faintly till the arms of the signals had all risen behind it, and the shining steel lines stretched still and uninhabited through the fields, we saw no sign of life beyond a cawing flock of rooks. The sun was bright, the hoar-frost only lay under the shadow of the hedge-rows, and not a breath of wind stirred the bare branches of the trees. After a word of protest I took the fur coat over my arm, and Daisy's bag in my hand, and we set out at a brisk pace to cover the two miles before us.
Presently a sleepy little village appeared ahead of us; before we reached it my guide turned off to the left.
“It is a little longer round this way,” she said, “but I am afraid the people in the village might—well—”
“Exactly,” I replied. “We are a secret embassy.”
It was a narrow lane we were now in, winding in the shade of high beech-trees and littered with their brown cast leaves. Whether it was the charm of the place, or that we instinctively delayed the crisis now that it was so near, I cannot say, but gradually our pace slackened.