"She almost lives in the garden, sir, this fine weather."
"Then I'll try my luck," said Herrick, shouldering his pack, which he had brought from no further than Lavendale Manor, where he had put on his pedlar's clothes and stained his complexion. He tramped along the avenue, struck off to the right hand before he reached the house, and made his way by a by-path to a little gate in a holly hedge, by which he entered the garden. All Squire Bosworth's old family plate was laid up in safe keeping at his goldsmith's, and the approaches to Fairmile Court were not over-jealously guarded. Herrick knew his way about the gardens. He had walked there last summer in the sweet sunset leisure of after dinner, when he and Lavendale were the Squire's honoured guests, Mr. Bosworth never suspecting that his lordship's companion could be his rival. He knew all Irene's favourite nooks and corners, and where to look for her.
He found her sitting under a cedar which Evelyn of Wootton had planted with his own hands, an enduring evidence of that accomplished gentleman's friendship for Squire Bosworth's grandfather. She was not alone, but, instead of her usual companion and governess, she had Mrs. Bridget, the nurse, who was sitting on a little wooden stool, knitting a stocking, while Irene sat on the grass close by, with an open book in her lap.
Now it happened that, next to Irene herself, Bridget, the nurse, was the person whom Herrick most ardently desired to see.
"Can I sell you a book, ladies?" he began in his feigned voice, standing a little way off, and opening his pack. "Here is Gulliver's Travels, the most wonderful book that was ever written, the book all the great folks in London were mad about last winter; and here is Robinson Crusoe, and The History of the Plague, and—"
But Irene had started, to her feet. Disguise his complexion, hide his eyes, alter his voice as he might, she knew him. She would have known him anywhere, and under even stranger conditions. The electricity of true love flashed from his soul to hers.
"Herrick!" she cried, "it is you!"
Mrs. Bridget also rose with a troubled air; but Irene laid a restraining hand upon her nurse's arm.
"You won't tell anybody, you'll let us talk to each other a little while?" she pleaded; and then in her most caressing manner, "you can hear all we say. I have no secrets from you, dear old Bridget."
"I'll warrant Mrs. Bridget would hardly swear so much on her side," said Herrick, with a lurking significance in his tone. "When people come to your nurse's age, Irene, they are apt to have a secret or two, be they ever so honest."