At last he came, almost simultaneously with a wild idea in his mother's head that he might have wandered towards Waterfall Cottage and somehow discovered that Stella was there.
She got up quite cheerfully when she saw him.
"You are late, dear boy," she said. Her heart had gone up because so many good things had happened this morning. Shawn was better and had recognized her. The wretch who would have hurt him in the secret places of his heart had gone on farther. Stella was doing well. It was always the way with her to be irrationally hopeful. Many and many a time she had had to ask herself why, on some particular day, she was feeling particularly happy, and had had to trace back the cause to something so small that even she had forgotten it. The founts of happiness in her were very quick to flow.
"There is a cold game pie here," she said, "and there is some curry which I have sent down to keep warm. Also there is pressed beef and a cold pheasant on the sideboard. I suggest that you begin with the curry and go on to the other things."
He did not answer her, but sat down with a weary air. She looked at him in quick alarm. He was not looking well.
"What is the matter, Terry?" she asked anxiously.
"Oh, nothing, darling, to make you look so frightened. Only I have had a rather gruesome experience. I found a dead man, and such an ugly one!"
"A dead man!"
"Yes—just by old Hercules O'Hart's tomb. The place will have twice as bad a name now."
"What sort of a man?"