She looked wistful, but he laughed, chucked her under the chin and walked away.
A few days later she drove over the bridge with Mrs. Marlowe. Just as the coach took the turn on the Wonston side she looked back and her eye was caught by an unfamiliar gleam of white among the foliage from which they had emerged. It was a board on a post. She could not distinguish the notice inscribed on it but she must know what it was. She pulled the check-string and with an incoherent explanation to Mrs. Marlowe jumped out and ran back.
These were the words she read:
'Let all drunkards and blasphemers and otherwise unholy persons who are the destroyers of peace, plenty, and prosperity in their homes, beware of this bridge. To such it may prove an instrument, placed by Almighty God in the hands of the devil, for their destruction in the blackness of night or the fury of the tempest.
'Simon Marlowe,
'Lord of the Manor, 18—.'
She did not shudder. She realised instantly that such a warning as this might be efficacious, while a new bridge would encourage vice by ensuring safety. She was then a girl in her early teens, and now she was a woman. Each year the clear lettering of the words had been renewed. But there had been no judgment of God on the drunken men who clung to their saddles by His providence, or reeled to and fro on foot as they made their way home on pitch-dark nights, when the ring of a horse's hoofs could not be heard above the roar of the flood rushing below.
As Borlase turned the corner to-day his eyes fell upon the board. He was driving slowly, as it was necessary to do at this point. A moment before he had caught the sound of voices above the murmur of the scanty summer stream. He knew they would be those of Constantine and Anna. And now, as his thoughts centred gravely on the words 'destroyers of peace' as for them the kernel of the warning at this hour, he came in sight of Anna.
She was sitting on the footway. Her hat was off, her head thrown back against the masonry, her hands were clasped round her knees. Over her there played the flecks of sunshine that filtered betwixt the foliage above. Her face was turned to Elias, who sat sideways upon the mare's back, looking down at her. Her attitude was listless, her face pale and grave. Just as Borlase saw her she raised her hand to impel silence and inclined her head to listen. Another moment and he became distinguishable in the shadow of the trees. A flash of relief so intense as to be almost joy crossed her face and she sprang up.