"Mrs. Gos--! Aunt Abby!" He choked and gasped. "But you--who are you?"
"I thought you must know my voice."
Sally removed her mask, and incontinently Savage fell back against the banister-rail and grasped it for support.
"Miss Manvers! But--what--how the devil did you get back here?"
"I haven't been out."
She pulled up on the verge of frank explanation; it was quite possible that Mrs. Gosnold might furiously resent betrayal of her stratagem. And yet Savage's look of pure fright only augmented Sally's solicitude for her employer.
"You haven't been out! But ten minutes ago--out there--behind the trees--"
She shook her head and tried to smile a superior sort of a smile: "It wasn't I who met you."
The man made a gesture of hopeless confusion, and she could not but remark his surprising loss of colour. Suddenly he stepped to her side and seized her roughly by the arm.
"Then who was it'?" he demanded furiously. "If it wasn't you--who then? Damn it, you'd better tell me--!"