“Whose picture have you there, Harvey? Why, I declare,” she cried, in amazement, “if it isn’t Daisy Brooks!”
“Mrs. Rex Lyon, you mean,” said the detective, with a sly twinkle in his eye. “But for once in your life you are at sea––and far from shore; this portrait represents a different person altogether. Come, come, wife, get me a cup of tea––quick––and a biscuit,” he cried, leading the way to the kitchen, where the savory supper was cooking. “I haven’t time to wait for tea, I must overtake that girl before she reaches Whitestone Hall.”
CHAPTER XXXVI.
The shade of night was wrapping its dusky mantle over the earth as Daisy, flushed and excited, and trembling in every limb, alighted from the train at Allendale.
Whitestone Hall was quite a distance from the station; she had quite a walk before her.
Not a breath of air seemed to stir the branches of the trees, and the inky blackness of the sky presaged the coming storm.
Since dusk the coppery haze seemed to gather itself together; great purple masses of clouds piled themselves in the sky; a lurid light overspread the heavens, and now and then the dense, oppressive silence was broken by distant peals of thunder, accompanied by great fierce rain-drops.