He flung the coat angrily on to a box and turned his back squarely on me. It was maddening to have him think me some prudish little schoolgirl who would say limbs for legs, and who, after showing them for years in very short frocks, suddenly puts on her first long gown and is for denying she has any limbs—that is, legs. Sir George sneezed and drew a long, shuddering breath.
"Terrible!" he said. "This is what comes of admitting women to the universities. Would any man in his senses believe that such a situation as this is real?"
Nobody answered. Sir George was inspecting the inner room. I had gone to the window, and after a moment Mr. Harcourt joined me there. The thunder, which had ceased, was commencing again, and a blue-white flash threw out the landscape. It showed a long stretch of country road, running with mad little streams of yellow water, the drive curving past and flowing a dignified tributary into the lane, and it revealed something else. The lodge gates were there, opened back against the shrubbery! Under cover of the noise I turned to my companion.
"Who are you?" I demanded under my breath. "You are not Basil Harcourt! You had no more right to be in that house than I had."
"Save the right of sanctuary," he returned, looking at me oddly. "I got in through the chapel. And what does it matter, anyhow? It is enough for me just now that you are you and I am I."
"You are flippant," I retorted cautiously. "Why did you say you had had the gates taken down when they are still there, opened against the hedge?"
"Jove! That's a piece of luck," he exclaimed, without troubling to explain. "Why in the world did you say there were no gates?"
He opened the door and ran out into the storm. A moment later I saw him testing the hinges, and I flung away from the window. Before he came back he had closed the outer shutters.
Sir George had taken off his mackintosh and cap and, with a candle and a deck of cards, was preparing for solitaire on the top of the keg. The candle-light struck full on his face and showed his sandy moustache hanging limp and dejected, while little beads of moisture showed between the thin hair brushed across the top of his head. He was more nervous than he would have had us know, and the hands—very fine, long-fingered hands they were—that laid out the cards were trembling noticeably. At every sound he raised his head and stared at the door, and his arched, patrician nose would have been pinched if it had not been so swollen. I shuddered with remorse every time I looked at him. His right trouser was torn to ribbons from the knee down, and soon after our arrival he had disappeared into the rear room and emerged, bandaged with his spare handkerchiefs, and limping.
We sat there for two hours, Sir George pretending to play, I huddled on a box by the fire, and The Unknown across the hearth from me, stretched on the floor, and leaning on his elbows and whistling softly. Sometimes he looked at me and sometimes at the fire, and once or twice I found him watching Sir George with a curiously meditative gaze. I could not help wondering if he was thinking what a chance for ransom there would be if he could hold the two of us prisoner for a time.