When he reached the very humble little hostelry distinguished by the sign of the 'Saracen's Head,' the crest of the Deerings, which stood beside the village green of Denham, Lambert was cool and collected enough. He dismounted, and desired that his horse should be given a feed of oats, that the girths should be loosened, but the saddle was not to be removed, "for," said he very deliberately, "I want to finish a sketch of the Deer's Barn, and get back to catch the up-train at Earlshall about six, so I may want the horse all in a hurry."
So saying, he walked quietly through the great old wrought-iron gates, and up the stately avenue for a few hundred yards. Then striking to the left, he quickened his pace, and plunged into the beautiful woods all flushed with the first tender green of spring, trampling down the great feathery fronds of the fern, the variously-tinted leafage of the undergrowth, till he reached an open space, from which a heath and gorse-grown upland sloped gently towards some distant hills. And all these grand woods, this beautiful sweep of hills, these groups of dappled deer, that murmuring brown stream, the solemn, stately beeches that clustered round the barn which stood at the verge of the deer-park,—all these were Elsie's; and as he thought, Travers Deering came out from the shadow of the rough, picturesque edifice and advanced to meet him.
The two men came face to face, a little in the rear of the barn, and stood in silence for a few seconds, eyeing each other with deadly hatred; nor was the gaze of the unscrupulous villain a shade less steady or unflinching than that of the man he intended to make his victim.
"Pray why have you taken the trouble to come down here, when you might have seen me in town next week?" asked Deering coolly.
"For various reasons, chiefly because I could not wait."
"Then you have something important, something favorable for yourself to propose. First, where is Elsie? You know?"
"I do."
"Is she in England?"
"No."
"Will you tell me where she is?"