So as one accustomed to keep a sharp eye on the morals and affairs of his cottage tenants, he began to question her about herself. She had thrown herself confusedly on a chair, and sat with her head thrown back, and her eyes half closed—as though in pain. The replies he got from her were short and grudging, but he made out from them that she had married a second time in the States, that she had only recently written to her son, who for some years had supposed her dead, and had now come home to him, having no other relation left in the World.
He soon convinced himself that she was not normally sane. That she had no idea as to his own identity was not surprising, for she had left Upcote for the States years before his succession to the White House estate. But her memory in all directions was confused, and her strange talk made him suspect drugs. She had also, it seemed, the usual grievances of the unsound mind, and believed herself to be injured and assailed by persons to whom she darkly alluded.
As they sat talking, footsteps were heard in the road outside. Mrs. Sabin—so she gave her name—at once hurried to the door and looked out. The movement betrayed her excited, restless state—the state of one just returned to a scene once familiar and trying, with a clouded brain, to recover old threads and clues.
Barron heard a low cry from her, and looked round.
"What's the matter?"
He saw her bent forward and pointing, her wrinkled face expressing a wild astonishment.
"That's her!—that's my Miss Alice!"
Barron, following her gesture, perceived through the half-open door two figures standing in the road on the farther side of a bit of village green. Meynell, who had just emerged from Maudeley Park upon the highroad, had met Alice Puttenham on her way to pay an evening visit to the Elsmeres, and had stopped to ask a question about some village affairs. Miss Puttenham's face was turned toward John Broad's cottage; the Rector had his back to it. They were absorbed in what they were talking about, and had of course no idea that they were watched.
"Why do you say my Miss Alice?" Barron inquired in astonishment.
Mrs. Sabin gave a low laugh. And at the moment, Meynell turned so that the level light now flooding the village street shone full upon him. Mrs. Sabin tottered back from the door, with another stifled cry, and sank into her chair. Her eyes seemed to be starting out of her head. "But—but they told me he was dead. He'll have married her then?"