“If Gilbert should miss me,” she thought, “what will he do? what will he think?”
She quickened her pace even more as she thought of her husband. What unlooked-for difficulties might she not have to combat if Mr. Monckton should discover her absence, and send or go himself in search of her.
She had reached the outskirts of the wood by this time, and the low gate in the iron fence—the gateway through which she had passed upon the day when, for the first time, she saw her father’s old friend, Maurice de Crespigny.
This gate was very rarely locked or bolted, but to-night, to her surprise, she found it wide open.
She did not stop to wonder at this circumstance, but hurried on. She had grown very familiar with every pathway in the grounds during her walks beside Mr. de Crespigny’s invalid chair, and she knew the nearest way to the house.
This nearest way was across a broad expanse of turf, and through a shrubbery into the garden at the back of the rooms occupied by the old man, who had for many years been unable to go up and down stairs, and who had, for that length of time, inhabited a suite of rooms on the ground-floor, opening with French windows on to a tiny lawn, shut in and sheltered by a thick belt of pine and evergreens. It was in this shrubbery that Eleanor paused for a few moments to recover her breath after hurrying up the hill, and to reassure herself as to the safety of the papers which she carried in the bosom of her dress—Launcelot Darrell’s water-colour sketch, and her father’s letter. The picture and the letter were safe. She reassured herself of this, and was about to hurry on, when she was arrested by a sound near her. The laurel branches close beside her had rustled, as if parted by a man’s strong hand.
Many times in her journey through the wood, Eleanor had been terrified by a rustling amongst the long grass about the trunks of the trees; but each time the sight of a pheasant flying across her pathway, or a frightened hare scudding away into the darkness, had reassured her. But this time there could be no mistake as to what she had heard. There was no game in Mr. de Crespigny’s garden. She was not alone, therefore. There was a man lurking somewhere under the shadow of the evergreens.
She stopped; clutched the documents that she carried in her breast, and then emerged from the shrubbery on to the lawn, ashamed of her fears.
The man whose presence had alarmed her was, no doubt, one of the servants—the gardener, most likely—and he would admit her to the house and save her any encounter with the maiden sisters.
She looked about the garden, but could see no one. Then, in a low voice, she called to the man by name: but there was no answer.