CHAPTER XIV
At half-past five on that same afternoon Jim Herrick and his dog were strolling across the meadows leading from the river to the village of Willowhurst.
The sky, which had been brilliantly blue all day, was beginning to be overcast, causing the energetic helpers at the Vicarage Bazaar to throw anxious glances towards the gathering clouds, and Herrick, who was a fair weather-prophet, foresaw a storm before sunset.
As he threw his leg over the stile leading into the last meadow, he paused suddenly.
Approaching him was Owen Rose's wife; and something in her mode of progress struck him as peculiar. She was coming along at a sort of fast walk, breaking now and then into a few running steps, stumbling occasionally and even stopping dead for a second before resuming her hurrying advance.
Her eyes were downcast; and she was quite close to him before she realized his presence. When she did look up he saw that she was crying, openly, sobbingly, as a child cries, the tears running in little channels over her cheeks and dropping unheeded where they would.
Even when she saw that she was not alone, Toni could not check those treacherous tears; and something told Herrick that she was craving for sympathy, that here was no sophisticated woman of the world, to whom the encounter would spell annoyance, but a forlorn and solitary child crying out its heart over some real or fancied tribulation, to whom a kindly word, a friendly greeting would bring only comfort.
He jumped off the stile and approached her, hat in hand.
"Mrs. Rose? You're in trouble over something? Will you tell me what's wrong—perhaps I can help you somehow?"