"I don't believe it is any of the people here. I think it was a woman in a long cloak, with the hood over her head. Oh, I had rather not go!"
"Nonsense! it was some of the servants, or some curious, inquisitive straggler, come to——"
She stopped, for Laura had made a warning gesture, and whispered, "Look there!" Olive looked. Directly opposite the house, and shrinking behind a clump of cedar trees, on the edge of a thickly-wooded portion of the grounds, she could see a figure indistinctly in the star-light—the figure of a female it looked, wearing, as Laura said, a long cloak, with the hood drawn over the head and shrouding the face. They were in deep shadow themselves, and Laura hid her white dress behind some laurel bushes. Olive's curiosity was excited by the steadfast manner in which the shrouded figure watched the house—through those large, lighted windows, Olive knew the person could distinctly see into the drawing-room, if not distinguish the people there.
"Laura," she whispered, "I must find out who that is. I can get round without being seen—you remain and wait for me here."
Keeping in the shadow, Olive skirted the lawn and round the cedar clump, without being seen or heard by the watcher. She glided behind the stunted trees; but though she was almost near enough to touch the singular apparition, she could not see its face, it was so shrouded by the cowl-like hood. While she stood waiting for it to turn round, a man crossed the lawn hurriedly, excitedly, and, with a suppressed exclamation, clasped the cloaked figure in his arms. Olive hardly repressed a cry—the man was her husband, Paul Wyndham!
"My darling!" she heard him say, in a voice she never forgot—a voice so full of infinite love and tenderness, that it thrilled to her very heart—"my darling, why have you done this? I have been searching for you everywhere since I heard you were here. My love! my love! how could you be so rash?"
"I was so lonely, Paul, without you!" a woman's voice answered—a voice that had a strangely-familiar sound, and Olive saw the cloaked figure clinging to him, trustingly. "I was so lonely, and I wanted to see them all. But I am very cold now, and I want to go home!"
"I shall take you home at once, my darling! Your carriage is waiting at the gate. Come, I know a path through this wood that will lead us out—it will not do to go down the avenue. Oh, my dearest! never be so rash again! You might have been seen."
They were gone; disappearing into the black cedar woods, like two dark specters, and Olive Wyndham came out from her place of concealment, and stood an instant or two like one who has been stunned by a blow. Laura Blair rose up at her approach with a startled face, and saw that she was ghastly white.
"Olly!" Laura said, in a scared voice, "wasn't that Mr. Wyndham who went away with—with—that person?"