"Did you?"
Dempsey grew bolder.
"Only it couldn't have been Miss Henderson, you see—because this lady I saw was a Mrs. Delane. But was Mrs. Delane perhaps a relation of Miss Henderson? She was just like Miss Henderson."
"I'll ask Miss Henderson," said Janet, moving towards the door, as a signal to him to take his leave. "But I expect you're confusing her with some one else."
Dempsey, however, began rather eagerly to dot the i's. The picture of the snowstorm, of the woman at the door, various points in his description of her, and of the solitary—apparently bachelor—owner of the farm, began to affect Janet uncomfortably. She got rid of the chatter-box as soon as possible, and went slowly to the kitchen, to get supper ready. As she fried the bacon, and took some vegetables out of the hay-box, she was thinking fast.
Tanner? No—she had never heard Rachel mention the name. But it happened that Dempsey had given a precise date. It was in the "November before they Passed Conscription" in Canada, i.e. before he himself was called up—that he saw Mrs. Delane, at night, in Dick Tanner's house. And Janet remembered that, according to the story which as they two sat by the fire alone at night, when the girls were gone to bed, Rachel had gradually built up before her. It was in that same month that Rachel had been deserted by Delane; who had gone off to British Columbia with the Italian girl, as his wife afterwards knew, leaving Rachel alone on the farm—with one Japanese servant.
Why shouldn't she have been staying on Mr. Tanner's farm? There was no doubt some one else there—whom the boy didn't see. Perhaps she had herself taken refuge there during the storm. But all the same Janet felt vaguely troubled.
* * * * *
It was nearly seven o'clock, and the moon, now at the full, was rising over the eastern hill, and balancing the stubbles and the new-turned plough-lands in the upland cup to a pearly whiteness as they lay under the dark woods and a fleecy sky. There was a sound of a motor in the lane—the village taxi bringing the travellers home.
In a few more minutes they were in the sitting-room, Rachel throwing off her thick coat with Ellesborough's help, and declaring that she was not the least tired.