"Come a little way down this walk, John," Posey said, the morning after her lover's arrival, while engaged in showing him the place, "and you will see exactly where the woman was sitting yesterday, when she got up and spoke to me in that dreadful way. I never dare tell my father, and it would worry dear Lady Campstown out of her wits to think any suspicious outsider had been seen lurking about the grounds. I rather fancied this person was out of her head, and so, when she vanished abruptly, I just told the gardener that a doubtful-looking stranger had been in the garden, and his men must be on the watch to see that it doesn't occur again."
"Quite right," said Glynn. "I dare say you won't hear of her any more. What sort of a lunatic was she? Young or old, smart or shabby, English-speaking or foreign?"
"Oh! English decidedly, with one of their lovely low voices, from the throat. A lady, I suppose, one would call her, but shabby and deadly pale with glittering brown eyes, and lips with no color. I should think she took morphine, or some of those horrid things. Her clothes had been handsome once, but were put on in a slovenly way."
"Probably some poor soul here for her health, who had escaped from her caretakers. Certainly, you can have no enemies, my dear girl?"
"I didn't think so," answered Posey, flushing, "until I received a number of anonymous letters on shipboard, and several afterward. Then they stopped suddenly."
"Do you mind telling me their drift?"
Posey's cheeks became crimson, but she looked him bravely in the face.
"They were all full of lying things against me and the man I told you I met at sea—and have never seen or heard from since."
"Thank you, dear," said Glynn, simply. "We have both need of consideration for each other, and I trust you thoroughly. But this gives me an idea. You say the morphine lady told you she had a favor to ask of you——"
"Yes, but before she could get further, the gardener's man came in sight, and she took flight. She said that I was luckier than she, since I could buy my peace, and she'd advise me not to hold back now when I'd a chance to do so."