Four of them, older women, stood together in a close ring. The two others, young girls, hung about near, but a little apart from the ring, as if they desired not to identify themselves with any state of mind outside their own. By their low sibilant voices, the daring sidelong sortie of their bright eyes, their gestures, furtive and irrepressible, you gathered that there was unanimity on one point. All six considered themselves to have been discovered.
At Anthony's approach they moved away, with slow, casual steps, passed through the posts at the bottom of the lane and plunged down the steep path, as if under the impression that the nature of the ground covered their retreat. They bobbed up again, one after the other, when the lane was clear.
The first to appear was a tall, handsome, bad-tempered-looking girl. She spoke first.
"It's a damned shame of them to keep us waiting like this."
She propped herself up against Anthony's wall and smouldered there in her dark, sullen beauty.
"We were here at six sharp."
"When they know we were told not to let on where we meet."
"We're led into a trap," said a grey-haired woman.
"I say, who is Dorothea Harrison?"
"She's the girl who roped Rosalind in. She's all right."